Scotland’s Smoking Prevention Working Group Publish Report

The Smoking Prevention Working Group’s report – Towards a Future without Tobacco – has now been published. Written by Dr Laurence Gruer, Director of Public Health Science at NHS Health Scotland, the report sets out 31 recommendations, mainly aimed at preventing children and young people from starting to smoke and becoming regular smokers.

A Scottish Executive spokeswoman said: “We would like to extend our thanks to Dr Gruer and his colleagues on the working group for their hard work in writing this report. We will now give careful consideration to the report and its recommendations before publishing a full response in due course.”

The Smoking Prevention Working Group was established as a sub-group of the Scottish Ministerial Working Group on Tobacco Control. It was asked to make recommendations to help develop a new long term smoking prevention strategy to guide future tobacco control activity at national and local level. This included reviewing current national communication and education programmes and the development of a long term communication strategy.

Following an amendment to the Smoking Health and Social Care (Scotland) Act 2005, it was also tasked with advising Ministers on the question of evidence to support raising the age of sale for tobacco products from the current age of 16 years.

The Group met on six occasions between August 2005 and May 2006, and included key academics in the field of youth smoking, representatives from health boards, ASH Scotland, the Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health and the Scottish Executive.