Today is ‘No Smoking Day’, providing the opportunity to get people thinking about a positive, smoke-free future.
This national campaign, developed collaboratively between ASH and Breathe 2025 with support from PHE Marketing, GM Health and Social Care Partnership and Fresh Smokefree North East, encourages smokers to search ‘smokefree’ to access local stop smoking support and make a quit attempt.
Here at Honour Health, we see the immense damage that smoking does to the mouth, gums and teeth. Smoking causes bad breath and leads to tooth staining due to the nicotine and tar in tobacco. It can also cause gum disease, as smokers are more likely to have bacterial plaque. Their gums are affected because smoking results in a lack of oxygen in the bloodstream, preventing infected gums from healing. Gum disease get worse at a quicker pace for smokers than non-smokers – and, worryingly, gum disease is still the most common cause of tooth loss in adults. In more severe cases, smoking can cause mouth cancer.
The key message of the No Smoking Day campaign is that ‘quitting smoking doesn’t have to be stressful’, thanks to the wealth of stop smoking aids and support available for smokers.
As part of this year’s campaign, new resources have been developed, prompting smokers to visit the NHS Better Health website. There’s a huge amount of information and support available there, including a range of free tools such as the Smokefree app, SMS and email support, and the ability to search for your local stop smoking service.
Research conducted by the campaign has shown that smokers who quit for six weeks or more are happier and experience less anxiety and depression than those who carry on smoking. There could be a number of reasons why quitting improves your mental health, but one is that it breaks the cycle of nicotine dependence. Every day smokers go through withdrawal symptoms, which are briefly alleviated by smoking, but quickly return as the effect of the nicotine wears off. Stopping smoking altogether breaks this cycle, improving people’s sense of wellbeing.
If you’re a smoker who would like to seize the opportunity on ‘No Smoking Day’ to take the first steps in quitting cigarettes for good, visit the NHS Better Health website here. Today’s the day!