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£50m bill for the nicotine patches 'that keep the smokers addicted'
'Smokers urged to sue the NHS'
The NHS is spending more than £50 million a year on nicotine patches and gums despite alarming new evidence that they do not help smokers quit the habit.
A Treasury report into public health spending questions the success rates that supposedly justify the use of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) in clinics
And a leading anti-smoking expert is urging smokers to sue the NHS for the poor quality of advice.
Clinics using the NRT claim that more than 100,000 smokers who attended last year managed to quit.
'Only a fraction give up'
But the report last week by former NatWest bank chief Derek Wanless reveals that a smoker has to stop for only two weeks in the first four to be defined as a quitter. Mr Wanles says this is an unreliable test of whether a smoke has genuinely given up.
He adds: 'Given the addictive nature of tobacco, only 30 to 40 percent of smokers truly abstinent at four weeks are likely to be abstinent at one year.'
This supports the views of NRT critics, who say that nicotine patches, gums and lozenges make hundreds of million of pounds a year for drug companies but help only a tiny fraction of smokers give up.
Renowned quit-smoking guru Allen Carr, whose non-drug method aims to remove psychological barriers to giving up, is urging smokers prescribed NRT to sue the NHS.
He said yesterday: 'Nicotine patches and other forms of NRT don't replace nicotine - they are nicotine. All these products do is help keep many smokers physically and psychologically addicted to the substance that's causing their problems in the first place.
'Giving them nicotine in another form just subtly reinforces the idea that they really can't manage without it - which is why NRT rarely works.'
'Staggering 94% failure rate'
Manufacturers say NRT is clinically proven to 'double' a smoker's chances of giving up. But critics point out that this is still only an improvement from three percent with no assistance at all to six percent with NRT.
Despite this high failure rate - 94 per cent - the NHS has paid Novartis, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline around £80 million for patches and other forms of nicotine therapy since they became available on the NHS prescription four years ago, and spent a further £90 million on smoking clinics that rely heavily on NRT.
'Public funding to increase by £138 million for a product that produces a 94% failure rate'
Over the next three years the Government plans to increase funding to these clinics by £138 million.
Health Secretary John Reid, the Government-funded QUIT campaign and the anti-smoking lobby group ASH all defend the use of NRT as the centrepiece of all publicly funded quit-smoking programmes.
'Despite £50 million a year spent on NRT the number of smokers remain the same at 27%'
But the Wanless report says that despite all the efforts to tackle the problem, including heavy investment in NRT, the number of smokers has remained relatively stable over the past ten years, at around 27 percent of the population, and anti-smoking efforts have not been successful.
'Hypnosis is still being ignored in favour of NRT'
Mr Carr claims a 53.l3 per cent success rate after 12 months for his treatment. But Steve Crone, Chief executive of QUIT, said his methods were not clinically tested.
The Mail on Sunday March 7, 2004
Well, here's something to think about?
The British Medical Journal reported 85% medical & surgical procedures are scientifically unproven.
BMJ October 1991
For other medical facts Click Here
But this does not stop the NHS from using these scientifically unproven procedures does it?
If they are really serious about finding out the truth then why don't they fund a scientific trial of say 10,000 people who are sent to hypnotherapists and 10,000 to their stop smoking campaign. For a government who is spending millions of our money on NRT this will involve an additional cost of £100 * 10,000 = £1,000,000. After a year they can compare the abstinence rate between NRT and hypnotherapy.
I am sure most hypnotherapists will be willing to work for £100 per person compared to £275 that the government is allocating at the moment per smoker to be sent to the NRT clinics?
For people who have quit smoking using Hypnotherapy, we suggest you send an invoice to your local Primary Care Trust (PCT) asking to be reimbursed. After all, they are suppose to be helping you quit smoking by any means aren't they?
You can reach the appropriate PCT by clicking on one of the links below:
South Birmingham PCT
Heart Of Birmingham PCT
Eastern Birmingham PCT
North Birmingham PCT
Walsall PCT
Wolverhampton PCT
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