Why do so many people with asthma smoke?

According to our annual survey, 27% of people with asthma say they have smoked in the last six months. That’s considerably more than the 20% of men and 22% of women that ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) say smoke among the general population.

It’s an even more striking figure when you consider that 82% of people with asthma say that smoking triggers their asthma. So a substantial number of people are doing something that directly triggers their asthma.

Asthma UK has been an active member of the Smokefree Action Coalition for a number of years, and we were instrumental in the drives to make UK smoke free, beginning with Scotland in 2006, Wales and Northern Ireland and finally England in 2007. People with asthma report that smoke free legislation has made a big positive difference to their quality of life.

So what do the numbers tell us?

Above all, the figures suggest that it is very hard to give up smoking. Tobacco causes over 50 different diseases and if the threat of lung cancer hasn’t made you give up, asthma probably won’t do the job either. So we need to work hard to make sure that people don’t take up smoking in the first place.

There is a lot of evidence now that the marketing of cigarettes does encourage young people to take up smoking, which is why Asthma UK supported recent successful efforts to put cigarettes firmly under the counter in local newsagents and other shops.

We need to go further of course. NHS smoking cessation services have been shown to work. But not everyone who wants support gets it. We need to make sure that more people with asthma are targeted with offers of stop smoking services, ideally where there will be others giving up who can provide encouragement and moral support.

It’s scandalous that with all we know about the effects of smoke, more people with asthma are still smoking than the national average for the population.

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