Professor Linda Bauld Inaugural Lecture: Smoking Still Kills - what next for tobacco control
28 April 2010
Professor Linda Bauld outlined the extent of
the smoking epidemic and what can be done to reduce smoking rates further, as part of an Inaugural
lecture. She provided an overview about what we know about what works in tobacco control and to
what extent effective policies have been implemented in the UK.
Professor Bauld focused in particular on what can be done to encourage smoking cessation amongst adults, including interventions that are effective at the individual and at the societal level. The lecture examined evidence for new policies to address smoking, and asked to what extent lessons from tobacco control can be applied to other areas of public policy.
Smoking remains the leading cause of ill-health and preventable death in the world, accounting
for more than five-million premature deaths each year. In the UK, despite considerable progress in
reducing smoking rates in the past forty years, at least one in five adults continues to smoke.
Smoking rates are higher in more disadvantaged communities and tobacco use accounts for half of the
difference in life expectancy between the most and least disadvantaged groups in England.
