Health Bill [HL]

I shall speak to proposed new subsection (2) in Amendment 104 when we reach Amendment 105, because I think that there is a direct link between plain packaging and smuggling tobacco. I return to my experience in the early 1990s when I was trying to stop smoking. I wanted information on the effectiveness of the various options to help me to stop smoking, but that information was simply unavailable. I remember that on one occasion I was advised to go to Harley Street, and I went for hypnosis because I was told that that was a way to deal with it. I think that I wasted about £100. The point is that there was no authoritative source of information to guide me on whether to go for treatment in Harley Street and have hypnosis. I was advised that I should use patches. Again, the manufacturers of patches were very keen to tell us how wonderful they were, but I had no knowledge at the time, nor do I to this day, as to the incidence of success. I remember being told that I could have acupuncture. I did not know whether acupuncture worked. Some people say that it does but, again, there was no authoritative source. I should have thought that any strategy document presented to Parliament would deal with the various options available to the public, enabling them choose which route they went down, given the options available. If I recall correctly, in the mid-1990s, Frank Dobson introduced health action zones, where money was made available for anti-smoking strategies. An evaluation was done, but I remember reading the report from my health action zone. I never felt that the information that it provided was authoritative in the sense that it could pinpoint real success as against information that the health authority had gleaned and was using to justify the expenditure involved in the health action zone. I should like to see in the report an explanation of the amount of money that has been put into research into helping people to stop smoking. I have always wondered why there was not a substitute drug on the market, which we could take in a pill or even an injection, to help us to stop smoking. If we can put a man on the moon, I cannot see why someone, somewhere has not been able to invent a product which would be a substitute for nicotine or smoking and which would enable us to run down. I understand that even to this day these products are not available. My sister has been trying to stop smoking for the past five years but she simply cannot stop.