HUNDREDS of smokers in Bolton will quit for good on Wednesday to mark national No Smoking Day.
Last year, calls made to the Bolton Fresh Focus team, dedicated to helping people give up the habit, went up by 70 per cent during the week of No Smoking Day.
And research shows around 85,000 smokers in the UK will successfully stop smoking today.
No Smoking Day, which began in 1984, has already helped 1.2 million smokers give up, saving the NHS £1.5 billion in treating diseases caused by smoking.
Adrian Butterworth, manager of Fresh Focus, said: "More people decide to quit smoking on No Smoking Day than any other day of the year and we are here to support those people once they have made that decision.
"We want to beat last year's figures to ensure more people in Bolton become non-smokers."
Bolton's Fresh Focus service gets referrals from the NHS quit smoking helpline and research shows smokers are four times more likely to quit if they use their local NHS service.
Last year 990 people in Bolton gave up smoking.
The Bolton Evening News launched its Stub it Out campaign last October calling for a ban on smoking in pubs, restaurants and public buildings in the town.
Bolton Council, in conjunction with the Bolton Primary Care Trust, is now compiling data so that it can lobby Parliament at the end of the year to support Bolton being made a smoke-free town. Banning smoking in public places would help more to quit, according to Bolton's public health team.
Anti-smoking health worker Bolton Deborah Smethurst said: "If there were restrictions on smoking in public places, I'm confident more people would want to quit."
There are currently 30 councils across the country preparing to take their case to Parliament so that they can ban smoking, but most are waiting to see the outcome of Liverpool's Bill which has just had its second reading in the House of Lords.
If you want to quit, call Fresh Focus on 01204 360008.
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