No Smoking Day 2010
If you’re a smoker and you’ve had enough of shivering in smoking shelters, de-fumigating your wardrobe and spending the cost of a Caribbean cruise on your habit, there’s no better day to stop (apart from tomorrow) than 10th March 2010: No Smoking Day.
What’s more, over one million other would-be quitters will be joining you in the attempt!
Over the past few years more and more people have been kicking the deadly habit for good and this trend, coupled with the advent of the smoking ban, the prohibitive prices and the increase of the legal smoking age, is due in no small part to No Smoking Day.
Part of No Smoking Day’s success is due to the fact that it works throughout the year in partnership with other organisations in the public, private and voluntary sectors, and undertakes extensive ground research, liaising with smokers to discover the key factors that trigger an attempt to quit.
National No Smoking Day
This year’s theme – Break Free, We Can Help – was chosen in consultation with smokers themselves and refers to their feelings of enslavement and powerlessness as a result of their addiction: No Smoking Day’s website gives suggestions of ways in which organisation or individuals can organise their own No Smoking Day Event, with ideas surrounding the theme; for example, a tug of war between smokers and non-smokers using a big chain, stalls covered in chains, smoking challenges or breathe-ins with CO monitors.In 2009 a total of 900,000 people quit on No Smoking Day. This year looks to be even rosier – and so will you, if you give up smoking!
No Smoking Day: The Charity
The first president of No Smoking Day is Duncan Bannatyne – entrepreneur and dragon from BBC TV’s programme Dragons’ Den, who says:
“A twenty-a-day smoker could save £2,111 a year by quitting, so it makes financial sense, health sense and good common sense. There’s no better time to quite than No Smoking Day.”
As well as encouraging local and group events from the website www.nosmokingday.org.uk