Jul 2009 02

Put a stop to the wasteful NHS bribes8

Smokers in Dundee are now being paid to give up cigarettes as part of a NHS scheme.  Quitters now receive £12.50 towards their groceries each week in order to give them the encouragement they need.
The taxpayer funded crusade against smokers continues.

Don’t smokers already have enough incentive to quit?  They would already be saving money by not buying cigarettes not to mention improving their health which is surely priceless.  Do they really need taxpayers to give them more reason to quit?  And if all of these more serious, and pre-existing reasons to quit aren’t already enough, is a couple of pounds a day really going to make a difference?
According to the BBC, there are over 360 people in Dundee currently involved with the scheme.  At this rate, one year will cost taxpayers £234,000, and the number of participants is growing by 20 to 30 people each week.  We could end up paying £23.4 million per year if Dundee’s entire smoking population were to cash in on the incentive.

And yet, at this high cost, it is predicted by Tayside NHS that there will only be a 50% success rate.  With the current 360 participants, this means that a minimum of £117,000 of taxpayers’ money is going down the drain.  And this rate of 50% seems more than optimistic.  According to The Sun, NHS Lothian ran a similar cash-for-quitters scheme only to give it up after 3 months when only 7 of their 27 participants had quit.

And still, many hope that this scheme will be replicated nationally.  The cost would be staggering.  In the midst of the recession, when many people are having trouble making ends meet, why should we pay for this ineffective, wasteful scheme?

Why is it that smoking such a hot topic anyway?  Why aren’t drinkers being given incentives to quit drinking?  I quit drinking coffee this year and there was no one around to pat me on the back.  I quit because it made me feel healthier.  People just aren’t expected to do things on their own any more, next thing we know the government will be giving cash incentives for people to clean their flats every day, ‘Well done, you washed your windows, here’s £50’.  These are personal issues; they should be resolved privately. 

And soon enough people are going to start demanding monetary rewards for improving their health.  There is a serious danger that these incentives will turn into the norm, and that the taxpayer will be footing the bill.

But who knows, if the scheme goes national maybe I’ll take up smoking, and then quit, but I wouldn’t want to quit too well, just enough to keep the money flowing.  I could use the extra £650 a year.

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  • Hardeep Singh

    This is discrimination, now can someone tell me whole heartedly whether that would be accpetable in other walk of life. If someone discriminated against sex, age, colour, etc there would be uproar yet when it comes to the silly nonsense of ideology it’s okay for me to get nothing for running 6 miles every on a regular basis, eating along healthy lines and generally keeping myself in a state of well being. Yet people living in certain postcodes or ‘targeted’ sections of the polical spectrum enjoy this “we come to you” style of service, why… what’s so special about them may I ask? I don’t mind if they wish to waste their own resources and money but I do have an issue with squandering away vital tax monies. These people need to see the value of their actions in giving up smoking they are the winners, they save a hole load of cash, they get the health benegits and hopefully the social ones too, so where on earth does public money factor into all of this?
    How does the government help me? Other than paying into the system I get little back out of it, where’s the cash for encouraging new business startups intsead, no business rates for the first year of your new venture. Maybe subsidised sports lessons for encouraging children to engage with sport. What I can’t accept is this cash in hand mentality, sure spend on setting the campaign up but stop paying people they just think of it as free money, besides how do you check they were a smoker in the first place and how will you measure the reduction or end of their smoking habit?
    Silly, stupid, wasteful, ideologically led, politically inspired, taxpayers burdened that’s all I can say.

  • David Prince

    Wow away to get some of my taxes back, I have just taken up smoking in the hope that the scheme will go nation wide.

  • J McDowall

    I wonder what the total cost to the NHS of all smoking cessation initiatives is? How many millions are being wasted in this way? With a pensions crisis on the horizon, I’d have thought there would be a real incentive to keep smokers puffing away to an early demise. The result would be a saving in pensions and all smoking cessation spending. Double result!

  • Andrew Freeman

    I have just been doing some research on the Gateshead Local Authority website for a property I am dealing with and came across their “Smokefree Gateshead Action Plan” (don’t ask why….)
    To save the good people of Gateshead from themselves requires taxpayers to pay the salaries of all of the following:
    Public Health Practitioner, Tobacco Control Project Manager, Public Health Consultant, Health Trainer, Public health Information Analyst, Medicines Manager, Commissioning Manager, Stop Smoking Service Manager, Health Improvement Practitioner(Young People), Stop Smoking Pregnancy Advisor, Workplace Stop Smoking Advisor, Health Improvement Practitioner (Children), Schools Drugs and Substance Misuse Co-Ordinator….phew!! Is there a collective noun for a group of pointless non-jobs?? Is it any wonder the country is nearly bankrupt?
    Anyway, in jest I e-mailed Gateshead to ask them how many civil servants does it actually take to put out a cigarette?
    Their response was:
    “Currently, no-one knows. We are developing a policy practice document, implementing a qualitative management infrastructure and a set of standard operating procedures to allow us to move towards a “total extinguishment event”. However that will require the additional recruitment of a “Tobacco Water Application Team” and “Water Application (Smoking) Total Extinguishment Regulator” at the correct salary grade. Once we have recruited Grade One TWATs and WASTERs we will be able to take steps to move towards the possibility of a total extinguishment event.
    That event will however be dependent on a health and safety audit from the “Safety and Health Inspection Team Supervisor”. We can’t move towards a total extinguishment event yet because the health and safety SHITS won’t actually let us light a cigarette in the first place……”
    Nice!!

  • jrb

    When the scheme reaches Essex I shall be going back to smoking.
    OR
    Why not pay an incentive to everyone who does not smoke, so as to give an incentive to stop, for those that do ?

  • John Price

    As Usual, the thick, short sighted Government Ministers are not thinking ahead, Smokers and Motorists generate huge amounts of taxes.. IF the idiots persuade even 50% of smokers to give up.. who is going to pay the taxes they will lose??. As usual it is a huge con.. they kid us that they are doing something for our benefit!.. How do they know for certain that the people claiming these Payouts for quitting smoking have actually given up??..They are just pushing it underground!.. Let’s fire the lot and start over with REAL PEOPLE!.. Instead of these arrogant scroungers, liars, cheats who rob the taxpayer blind at every opportunity!.. They don’t even have the decency to apologise when they are exposed!..

  • Stephen

    If the initiative is effective in stopping people from smoking it will be worth it. I am sceptical that it will work, but then I am quite well off so £12.50 for me is a trivial sum. But for its target audience, it might make a difference. It’s certainly worth a pilot study, which is presumably what this Dundee initiative is. If it works, then good. If it doesn’t then don’t repeat the experiment. The sums of money are very small and opposition appears to be motivated by ideological attitudes rather than a concern about the money.

  • Stephen

    IF the idiots persuade even 50% of smokers to give up.. who is going to pay the taxes they will lose??
    Isn’t that a good reason for persuading people to give up. The taxes on tobacco are an unfair regressive tax. I would have throught that the ‘Taxpayers Alliance’ would instinctively understand that. If we can persuade fewer people, especially fewer poorer people to pay it, then that’s a good thing.