Balanced News Blog

School pupils as young as 12 are to be given nicotine patches to help them stop smoking. Nurses and trained staff at six secondary schools in County Durham, close to the prime minister’s Sedgefield constituency, will prescribe the treatment and monitor usage and results.

The programme follows a successful pilot scheme at Greencroft school in Annfield Plain last year, where half of a group of 30 children who were given the patches stopped smoking. Regular cigarette use in the region is slightly higher than the country-wide average, which experts say is 1% of 11-year-olds. This rises to 16% of boys and 26% of girls by the age of 16.

Derwentside primary care trust and the government’s Sure Start scheme have joined forces to develop a protocol on the use of nicotine replacement therapy for 12- to 17-year-olds in Derwentside schools. “It does not take long for young people to be addicted to nicotine,” said Ian Miller, a smoking cessation adviser for the trust. “By the time they have overcome the spluttering start to smoking and learned to smoke three full cigarettes, inhaling the smoke properly, they can be displaying the key signs of addiction.”

The nicotine patches will only be issued to pupils who agree and have parental consent, and Quit, a national organisation which helps people give up, will offer training and advice. Treatment will be graded according to levels of smoking and each child will have their own tailored programme.

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This author believes that maybe a better law enforcement program to stop children as young as 12 buying cigarettes in the first place would be better. If you’re caught selling to underage, you should be fine a huge amount, caught again, you go to jail.
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Source: Guardian Unlimited.