NHS Digital's statistics for 2016-17 show a continuing decline in people accessing stop smoking services in England:3

·      the number of people setting a quit date fell for the fifth consecutive year to 307,507 in 2016-17, a 15% decrease on 2015-16

·      the number of successful self-reported quitters also fell for the fifth consecutive year to 155,875, a 16% decrease on 2015-16.

Even those entitled to free prescriptions are not accessing NHS support services like they were. There has been a steady decline from over 450,000 people doing this in 2011-12 down to 174,678 people who set a quit date in 2016-17. Most quit attempts involve one-to-one support, favoured by 249,000 people in the 307,507 quit attempts in 2016-17.3

Community pharmacy was the third most popular setting with 58,595 quit attempts, compared to general practice with 115,460 attempts, and community settings with 99,175 attempts. Despite its popularity, however, pharmacy had the lowest quit rates, with 45% of those self-reporting they had quit in the pharmacy, compared to 49% in general practice and rates above 50% in secondary care.3

Prescription items for smoking cessation products have fallen from 2.6m in 2010-11 down to 1m in 2016-17 when 542,000 NRT items were dispensed. For varenicline, 411 thousand items were dispensed in 2016-17, compared with a peak of 987,000 items in 2010-11.3