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£6m a year, the cost of treating smokers
SMOKERS cost Camden’s health services at least £6.5 million a year, a report reveals.
In the annual Camden Primary Care Trust report, published this week, public health director Professor Anthony Kessel says that 10 per cent of all drugs prescribed each year in Camden are linked to smoking.
The addiction was responsible for 850 out of Camden’s 4,000 deaths between 2004 and 2006.
Prof Kessel said: “The cost of treating smoke-related conditions and diseases, including admissions and prescribing, is estimated to be £6.5 million a year for Camden alone.”
He added that the figure was a low estimate as it did not take into account other, hidden, costs of smoking.
The glossy, 80-page report reveals that the less wealthy you are, the more likely you are to smoke. Researchers found ethnic minority groups have higher rates of smoking, with 40 per cent of people of Bangladeshi origin smoking.
Almost 25 per cent of 15-year-old schoolgirls admit they smoke, with the figure slightly less for boys of the same age.
But evidence from Scotland, which introduced a public smoking ban in March 2006, shows a steep decline in emergency admissions to hospital for heart attacks. |
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