"Give smokers time off to quit"

Leading health promotion bodies have called on employers to offer workers help - including paid time off - to give up smoking.

Backed by the campaign group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has issued advice on appropriate support for smokers as workplaces in England prepare to go smoke-free from 1 July.

NICE says its proposal will more than pay for itself by reducing the £5 billion annual cost of lost productivity, absenteeism and fire damage caused by workers who smoke. It claims that a firm with 20 employees, of which five smoke, could spend £66 on providing advice and make an overall saving of £350.

Local NHS stop-smoking sessions usually last 14 hours and run for six to seven weeks. Attendees spend two weeks preparing to stop, with two-hour meetings once a week, and then attend a further five meetings after they have quit. NHS research shows that half of attendees have given up smoking by the end of the course.

Unions are preparing for the smoking ban by insisting that employers do more to help smokers give up. A recent TUC guide stresses that they should not use the new law to "stigmatise or discriminate against smokers", but should offer "hardened nicotine addicts help in giving up if they want to quit".

The NICE guidance is available at www.nice.org.uk/phi005