In a recent move in the ongoing struggle to stop people smoking two NHS hospitals in Birmingham have made e-cigarette history and opened Vape shops inside their grounds.
Sandwell General Hospital in West Bromwich and Birmingham city hospital are determined to become smoke free areas, banning cigarettes completely on hospital grounds and imposing a £50 fine for anyone who is caught.
Using an e-cigarette is of course allowed, although it has to be away from doorways and the smoking areas have all been converted to vaping areas as well.
Their reasoning is that they do not want smokers spreading 2nd hand smoke, after all people come to hospital to get better, not to get worse!
As you probably know by now 2nd hand smoke is dangerous, with 10,000 people a year admitted to hospital from being exposed to cigarette smoke.
If this initiative gets taken up UK wide this could be the beginning of something great, as e-cigarettes have the potential to help the millions of smokers still in the UK, and the NHS as well.
Last week we talked about how the NHS spends billions of pounds every year on smoking related illnesses and social care, and this could be an excellent step in getting these smokers off cigarettes and saving the NHS billions in the process.
E-cigarettes after all are the best way to get these smokers off cigarettes as e cigs have been shown to be the most effective way to quit smoking. A smoker using an e cigarette to quit has over double the chance to quit compared with patches and other nicotine replacements.
By offering people the chance to switch to something with nicotine which feels and tastes like a cigarette, but without the 4,000 chemicals and 50 known carcinogens found in cigarettes, e-cigarettes can help more people finally quit smoking.
This move could also help with the public perception of e-cigarettes, as 25% of smokers still believe e-cigarettes are just as bad or worse than smoking!
Even after years of Public Health England saying again and again that e-cigarettes are "at least 95% less harmful than cigarettes", a quarter of smokers don't believe it. Hopefully those smokers in Birmingham will be see these Vape shops and see they are endorsed by the hospitals.
Although the two NHS hospitals main goal was to stop smoking and encourage e-cigarette use for health reasons, they didn’t forget about the financial reasons as well. In fact Dr David Carruthers, the medical director for the trust that runs both hospitals, said “Giving up smoking saves you money and saves your health”.
The amount saved is different for each smoker depending on what they smoke and how many a day but on average if you smoke 20 a day and buy an average pack of cigarettes (£10) then in a year you will spend £3650. With SMOKO to get the same amount of nicotine you would only be spending £2 a day. Over a year that’s a saving of £2920!
If you want to work out how much you can save with SMOKO e-cigarettes why not give out calculator a try?
And while SMOKO doesn’t have any shops in hospitals (yet) we do offer next working day delivery to anywhere in the country, and international shipping to anywhere in the world. Added to this shipping is free for any order over £30 and all our liquids are made in the UK it’s no wonder SMOKO has already stopped hundreds of millions of cigarettes being smoked!
If you want to make the switch to e-cigarettes try SMOKO for FREE*, Click here and try SMOKO for yourself!
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