Pregnant women offered £400 in shopping vouchers to quit smoking
Study finds women more than twice as likely to quit with financial incentive
Last updated 27th Nov 2023
A high street voucher scheme has proven to be an effective way to help women stop smoking during pregnancy, according to a recent university study.
The research, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, involved 1,000 pregnant women from the UK who smoked.
During the trial, half the women received standard Stop Smoking Services care.
The other half had the same prenatal care with the addition of £400 in high street vouchers.
More than a quarter (26.8%) of pregnant women from the group with the vouchers quit smoking by the end of their pregnancy, researchers found.
Just 12.3% of pregnant women from the other group stopped.
The study has been met with some criticism from anti-smoking charities locally.
Trish Ireland from Southport stopped smoking more than 20 years ago, but the impact of smoking has had a detremental effect on her life in later years.
She is now the chairperson of Breathe Easy, a support group and lung charity in West Lancashire and Southport, affilianted with Asthma + Lung UK
She said:
"Why would people be more interested in shopping vouchers than their baby's health?
"Smoking makes baby's smaller and less healthy. That is not good for their first year of life, or for the rest of their lives.
"It would be an incentive for everyone to say 'yes, I'll take the shopping vouchers' but from my own experience, it's only once you've got your own head right, and have decided for yourself, 'Yes, I am going to stop smoking today!'
"If people were promised shopping vouchers later, once they've given up smoking, maybe (it would work) but I think in these hard times, people would just snatch at the shopping vouchers and then just not bother.
Professor David Tappin, lead author of the study from the University of Glasgow, said:
"Through this study, we have shown that the offer of high street vouchers, when offered in tandem with the current UK Stop Smoking Services, is highly effective at more than doubling smoking cessation during pregnancy, with a reduction in NHS costs over the long term.
"Pregnant smokers are usually on low incomes.
"Stopping smoking saves £70-£100 per week by not buying cigarettes, which feeds into the 'levelling up' agenda.
"We hope our findings will enable services to increase smoking cessation during pregnancy."
The nationwide study was led by the University of Glasgow in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, Queen's University Belfast, and the Universities of Stirling and York.
The study was funded by Cancer Research UK, the Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office, HSC Public Health Agency Northern Ireland, HSC R&D Division NI, Northern Ireland Chest Heart and Stroke, The Scottish Cot Death Trust and The Lullaby Trust.