To continue reading please register or login to your OHW+ account.
Nearly 80,000 people gave up smoking between April and December last year, according to latest figures from the Government.
A total of 153,000 people had set a date to quit and, at the four-week follow-up about 79,100 of those had successfully quit, the Department of Health reported.
Of those setting a quit date, most (80 per cent) were aged 18 to 59, with 1 per cent under 18 and 19 per cent aged over 60.
The majority received nicotine replacement therapy or the anti-smoking drug Zyban. The cost of the smoking cessation services in this period was £16.7m.
Public Health Minister Yvette Cooper said: "Seventy per cent of smokers say they want to give up. This Government is the first ever to provide comprehensive support for smokers who want to quit.
"These figures show that this is already starting to pay off both for the thousands of smokers who want help in quitting and for the NHS."
Smoking cessation services were launched by the Government within health action zones in 1999.
The Government is committed to spending more than £53m on such services up to this year.
And in April it emerged the Department of Health had pledged its support for an MP's bill that will ban tobacco advertising. It is expected to pass on to the statute book this summer.
