Stoptober 2023
The Department of Health and Social Care is delighted to announce the return of Stoptober, the national campaign designed to encourage and support smokers to quit for good
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by Dave Cross
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“While smoking rates have declined in recent years,” says the Department of Health, “over 5 million people in England still smoke and it remains the single biggest cause of preventable illness and death. Since its inception in 2012, Stoptober has successfully helped 2.5 million smokers to make a quit attempt and has become a well-recognised annual event in the public health calendar.”
The Department says that the theme for this year is ‘When you stop smoking, good things start to happen’.
It hopes the theme reminds smokers of “the many benefits of quitting and providing useful tips to help them on their quitting journey.”
The campaign will encourage smokers to search ‘Stoptober’, directing them to a range of information and free support tools on the Better Health - Quit Smoking website.
The website directs smokers to the NHS’ vaping to quit smoking.
The NHS states:
- Nicotine vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking. It's also one of the most effective tools for quitting smoking.
- Vaping is not recommended for non-smokers and young people because it is not completely harmless.
The Health service delivers up facts on vaping, based on scientific evidence and research.
“We aim to launch Stoptober around 20 September to give smokers time to prepare for their quit attempt from 1 October,” continues the Department of Health. “A range of digital campaign resources will be available to download from the Campaign Resource Centre ahead of the launch including posters, a comms toolkit, social assets and web banners.”
The Department says it has also released a range of free stop smoking marketing resources available on the Campaign Resource Centre along with stop smoking content (including a substantial section of vaping content) available on the Better Health website.
It adds: “We are also developing some new assets including a leaflet, poster and social media posts which provide facts about vaping and how swapping to a vape can help you quit smoking.”
The Department is clouding the campaign by releasing teaching resources aimed at helping key stage 3 children understand “the impact that vaping has on their physical and mental wellbeing”. This includes films “co-created with young people”, discussing nicotine, what vaping is “and the impact it has on both young people and the environment”.
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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