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Last Updated: Jan 31st, 2007 - 10:58:43 |
SMOKERS GIVEN A LOTTO HELP TO QUIT THE HABIT
Feb 28, 2006, 15:57
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Smokers in the North-east who want to stub it out can get help from a millionaire lottery winner. The Scot, who wants to stay anonymous, has given ?100,000 to a treatment programme he used to quit. It means The Phoenix Programme, using a tobacco "vaccine", will be available to north-east people for the first time. Robert Brynin is the director of the National Smoking Cessation Cooperative (NSCC), a not-for- profit research group which runs the programme. He said: " This money means we will be able to bring the programme to Aberdeen and other areas. "Initially it will be done by a visiting team of a counsellor and a nurse." If it is popular NSCC plans to open up an office in Scotland. The programme is available to people aged 25 and over who have failed in other bids to quit smoking, and to pregnant women. Mr Brynin said: "They are taking what is effectively a 'vaccine' of tobacco. "That blocks the nicotine receptors in the immune system, and if they do not work then you don't have any cravings. "The key to the programme is the ability to stop you being addicted to nicotine." Those going through the programme are given the "vaccine" as mouth drops. Mr Brynin said: "They carry the drops around with them and in the first few days will take them quite a lot, maybe once an hour." He said that within a few days the cravings go and the drops are not needed. Mr Brynin said the programme is 76% successful and, though costs to smokers vary, each treatment costs NSCC ?240. The anonymous donor said: "It's a lot of money, but it's what I would have spent if I'd carried on smoking. "It's time this new treatment was available to the public and I can make that happen."
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