A comprehensive evaluation of the impact of English tobacco control policy on smoking cessation activities

我们的目标是评估最近的控烟政策对英格兰成功戒烟的吸烟者数量的影响。在英国，吸烟是可预防疾病和过早死亡的最大原因，而增加成功戒烟的吸烟者人数是减少该国发病率和过早死亡的最重要方式。这是最近许多国家烟草政策的基本目标。例如，香烟包装上已经引入了更大、更猛烈的健康警告。现在，经济激励措施鼓励家庭医生帮助想要戒烟的吸烟者。帮助吸烟者戒烟的药物，如尼古丁替代产品(NRT)，已经变得更容易获得，例如，NRT现在可以开给青少年和心脏病患者，这些治疗的柜台销售也减少了税收。最后，一种帮助吸烟者戒烟的新疗法--varenicline已经推出。这些政策和举措在增加吸烟者戒烟尝试和成功戒烟并最终改善健康方面的效果如何，还没有得到任何全面的评估。我们将使用几个现有的数据来源，包括专业和国家调查、电子初级保健患者记录、NRT的销售和处方以及住院数据，所有这些都提供了英国吸烟行为的不同衡量标准，以找出每一项具体政策的有效性。这项工作将有助于确定哪些政策是成功和有效的，哪些是应该维持的，哪些是无效的，应该放弃。

We aim to assess the impact of recent tobacco control policies on the number of smokers who succeed in stopping smoking in England. Smoking is the single greatest cause of preventable illness and premature death in the UK, and increasing the numbers of smokers who succeed in stopping smoking is the most important way of reducing morbidity and premature death in this country. This is the fundamental aim of many recent national tobacco policies. For example, larger and harder hitting health warnings have been introduced on cigarette packs. Financial incentives now encourage family doctors to help smokers who want to quit. Medications that aid smokers to quit, such as nicotine replacement products (NRT) have been made more accessible, for example, NRT can now be prescribed to adolescents and people with heart disease, and taxation has been reduced on over the counter sales of these treatments. Finally, a new treatment to help smokers quit has been launched, varenicline. How effective these policies and initiatives have been in increasing smokers’ attempts and success at quitting, and ultimately at improving health, has not been evaluated in any comprehensive way.We will use several existing sources of data, including specialised and national surveys, electronic primary care patient records, sales and prescriptions for NRT, and hospital admission data, that all provide different measures of smoking behaviour in England to find out how effective each of these specific policies have been. This work will help in establishing which policies are successful and effective and should be maintained, and which are ineffective and should be dropped.