Giving young children Argos vouchers to give up smoking is absolutely ridiculous
Dear Alan Johnson,
You recently described David Cameron as ”likeable”, “articulate” and “a nice guy” - hardly the usual slate of lame insults that Labour throw at the leader of the opposition. You also mentioned that “I am sure he is genuine about the NHS”, which will certainly separate him from you. David Cameron believes in personal responsibility and doesn’t believe in Labour’s ’something for nothing’ welfare state. Evidently you disagree, hence why we have two NHS Trusts under your leadership giving out shopping vouchers (paid for by the taxpayer) to children as young as ten to give up smoking.
The £15 rewards are available to anyone under 18 who can go without cigarettes for a month, even though they are under the legal age for buying tobacco. Brighton and Hove NHS Trust said that the programme, which also offers bribes for pregnant women to quit, has helped dozens of teenagers to stop smoking since it launched in 2005. Kate Lawson, head of ‘health promotion’ at the trust, confirmed that a 10-year-old was among those to have received the incentives after passing a breath test on a carbon monoxide detector. In case WH Smith and the Body Shop are not to their taste, vouchers for Argos, Boots, Asda and the Co-op are also available. “Stopping smoking is the best thing a young person can do to improve their future health and young people find it particularly hard to quit,” she said. “Evidence shows that motivating a young person with a small cash incentive is the push they need to ask for help.” A spokeswoman for Brighton and Hove NHS Trust added: “What’s remarkable is not that there are 10-year-olds that smoke, but that there are 10-year-olds who are trying to give up.” On average, the trust gives out vouchers to two teenagers a month. This news comes after North East Essex NHS Trust were heavily criticised for offering pregnant women a £100 reward to stop smoking. However, the anti-tobacco group ASH backed the scheme, saying anything that encourages the 6% of British children aged 11 to 15 who smoke to give up is welcome.
In My Manifesto, I made it clear that while I agree with the existence of a limited welfare state, we must always be wary of the fine line between supporting people in need versus incentivising the wrong behaviour. For example, if the government were to say that parents get £100 a week child benefit but teenage mums get £150 a week because they have ’greater needs’, the number of teenage mums would go through the roof (as if it hasn’t already) because the balance has tipped too far. Exactly the same principle applies here. Giving pregnant women in Essex £100 to stop smoking was described by local politicians as ”pocket money for bad behaviour”, while local residents have protested against the Brighton programme, accusing health bosses of spending taxpayers’ money on work that parents should be doing. I would be delighted if you could explain to me why children should not start smoking when there is a cash prize waiting for them if they smoke for a couple of months and then temporarily quit? Obviously the fact that parents are letting 10-year-old children smoke doesn’t bother you in the slightest. For a spokeswoman to say that 10-year-olds smoking is not in any way “remarkable” shows how cavalier they are. Of course quitting smoking is good for their health and I’m not surprised that teenagers haven’t been shy to come forward, seeing as you are giving them money to quit for a month and completely ignoring whether they start smoking again immediately afterwards. I’m just wondering when I will get my cheque for £100 for never smoking in the first place?
Labour are not bothered about the causes of obesity or knife crime or poor literacy or family breakdown. All you want is a quick and easy press release that deals with the symptoms rather than the cause. No doubt you will claim that ASH supporting the scheme vindicates these NHS Trusts. Having dug around their accounts, I found that ASH received a Department of Health grant of £191,000 last year (almost half of their entire income) for ‘Beyond Smoking Kills’, a new strategy document that sets out ambitious new targets for reducing smoking among – you guessed it – children and pregnant women. Targets are the only currency Labour understand, because they deal almost exclusively with symptoms such as 10-year-olds who smoke without paying the slighest attention to why on earth these children were smoking in the first place. Congratulations for driving another stake through the heart of good parenting, personal responsibility and a decent society.
Yours in dismay,
A.Tory
Unbelieveable – they really got that one wrong. I wonder what proportion of these ex-smokers spend their vouchers on cigarettes at the Co-op or Asda!
Now that would be hilariously ironic – get £15 for quitting for a month, only to blow the whole lot on cigarettes once the 30 days has elapsed.
Love it.
“No doubt you will claim that ASH supporting the scheme vindicates these NHS Trusts. Having dug around their accounts, I found that ASH received a Department of Health grant of £191,000 last year (almost half of their entire income) for ‘Beyond Smoking Kills’, a new strategy document that sets out ambitious new targets for reducing smoking…”
Yup, they’re a fakecharity all right…
And they are very annoying too. I was looking through the ‘Beyond Smoking Kills’ executive summary and found that ASH advocated (among many, many other things) banning the display of cigarettes in shops, banning cigarette vending machines, reducing the exposure of young people to smoking on TV and in cinemas, increasing investment in ‘education’ programmes on smoking, promoting smokefree homes and cars and also evaluting the possibility of banning smoking in cars altogether.
Any of this sound familiar?
I guarantee the next phase of the smoking crusade will be to ban smoking in the homes of people with children. Enforcing this will, naturally, require more officials to have the right to enter your property to carry out their checks.
Presumably the money saved from simply giving up smoking greatly exceeds the value of a £15 voucher. Supposing the smoke a pack a day at around £4 each, that would be £120, so if it were just a financial incentive they needed to quit then they would have already done so.
Ross, I don’t think ‘logic’ and ‘rational thinking’ apply to many Labour policies these days.
Shaun, I wish I could disagree with you but I can’t.
Great letter LFAT … and don’t get me started on ASH.
Why not?! Now is a good time to vent your anger, given their biased ignorance being put on display for all to see!
…I would be delighted if you could explain to me why children should not start smoking when there is a cash prize waiting for them if they smoke for a couple of months and then temporarily quit?…
…the next phase of the smoking crusade will be to ban smoking in the homes of people with children…
Gosh. It’s almost as if Labour don’t care two hoots about people’s welfare, so long as they can continue to build a client state consisting of an underclass dependent on handouts, forever dancing to the latest official behavioural guideline, together with an army of interventionist publicly funded busybodies intoxicated with the power they wield over us all.
Oh, hang on, we can’t necessarily infer that from the steady stream of news reports like this one, as there is an alternative hypothesis which fits the facts equally well. They’re all idiots (but at least not all of them are blind).
Idiots perhaps, but I suspect that it is their underlying philosophy that drives the majority of this. They are well aware that by making so many people dependant on tax credits and other state handouts, they can simultaneously draw voters in and force their ideology onto the public.
Unfortunately the level of opposition to this from the recipients, be it these stupid teenagers or otherwise, is often very low as they are getting something for nothing.
The spokesperson on BBC yesterday said “There is no evidence that this scheme works. Its early days. The scheme has also been runs in Finland ? for two years, but the evidence is inconclusive”
How can I dump my ‘Light ambiance measurements,working from heights between 0.3 + 0.6 meters and safe distances elbow travel on the desktop, to reduce RSI in the workplace by 2025′Quango and get a really meaty one like smoking?
There is a message for us in the fact that the scheme has been run for two years in Finland, with no conclusive results either way.
Only an idiot or someone with an agenda other than reducing smoking in children would miss it… so the jury is still out.
The evidence doesn’t appear to be anywhere near as important as the targets that ASH set themselves / the government in reducing teenage smoking rates. If the number of smokers comes down, even temporarily, they will be shouting from the rooftops about it – totally irrespective of the damage it might be causing.
Two years is a long time to not have a simple yes or no answer. I sense a new UK government advertising campaign coming on as we speak…..
How to they know they’ve stopped smoking? Are they given a blood test or do they just give them a sniff?
Didn’t I read something about a breath-CO detector? They use them at the GPs when you’re on Nicotine Replacement Therapy to spur you on as detectable carbon-monoxide leaves the blood stream…
/still pines for a ciggie from time to time and it’s been 4 bloody years!
Truly staggering.
One of your best, AT.
The vouchers will, of course, incentivise kids to spark up. It’s absurd.