East Lothian Smoking and Health Partnership has been set up to develop and implement a coherent smoking cessation service in East Lothian. The partnership will be working with a wide variety of organisations including: schools, community groups, health care professional and employers. Initially our work will be gathering information about the services available in the area, educating people of the dangers of smoking and letting them know where they can go for help.

The Dangers of Smoking
There are 4000 chemicals in a cigarette, 60 of which cause cancer. Nicotine is not the most dangerous component but it is the most addictive, but it is now known that nicotine is as addictive as heroin and cocaine.

• Smoking is the single largest cause of premature death in the UK
• 114,000 people die in the UK every year as a result of their smoking habit
• Smoking causes 30% of all cancer deaths -(including at least 84% of lung cancer deaths)
• 17% of all heart disease and 
• at least 80% of deaths from bronchitis and emphysema.

Smoking kills around six times more people in the UK than road traffic accidents (3,438), other accidents (8579), poisoning and overdose (3157), murder and manslaughter (513), suicide (4,066), and HIV infection (234) all put together. (22,833 in total - 2002 figures)

The Scottish National Smokeline: 0800 84 84 84

You will read about other freephone helplines but this is the only number applicable to Scotland unless you are pregnant or require services for speakers of ethnic languages.

NHS Pregnancy Smoking Helpline: 0800 169 9 169

UK charity QUIT runs a number of freephone Quitlines for minority ethnic communities with funding from the British Heart Foundation.