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ASH Daily News

9 November 2001

Headlines

BAT prepares its first social responsibility report
Funding fears hit national campaign to stop smoking

Full Text

BAT prepares its first social responsibility report

British American Tobacco (BAT) has been holding a series of “stakeholder” meetings to gather input for its first corporate social responsibility report scheduled for release in April 2002. BAT wants to hope to glean a modicum of respectability from the report. Health groups, which boycotted the meetings, are highly sceptical about the its aims, however.

“Where we are successful in achieving public health measures, BAT loses business. When BAT makes money, people die: about 750 from last year’s sales,” Clive Bates, director of Action on Smoking and Health wrote in the rejecting the invitation.

Full story: http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7321/1089/b
Source British Medical Journal, 323:1089, 10 November 2001



Funding fears hit national campaign to stop smoking

A health expert has raised concerns that the government may not be committed to funding smoking cessation clinics being run from primary care trusts.

Robert West professor of psychology at the St. Georges Medical School in Tooting said a lack of finances could lead to a system where access to smoking cessation clinics would depend on the areas where people live.

The Government had said three years ago that £50 million would be spent on helping smokers to quit, with clinics set up in every health authority. But the clinics’ funds run out in April and the Department of Health has announced no further finances.

Professor West fears that without assurances from the Department of Health primary care trusts are not going to be willing to continue with there smoking cessation services.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said that Alan Milburn will make decisions on funding “in due course” and added: “All Primary Care Trusts should be planning for continuing provision of services to 2002/3.”

The Government has pledged to cut smoking among children from thirteen percent to nine percent by 2010, and adult smoking to 24 percent.

Source: Evening Standard, 8 November 2001



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