To ask the Secretary of State for Health what recent steps he has taken to publicise the effects of smoking on health.

Government has run a number of campaigns in recent years to publicise the effects of smoking on health and encourage people to quit smoking, through the Department of Health and from April 2013, Public Health England (PHE).

From April to June 2012, the Department ran a 'Smokefree homes and cars' campaign, which brought to life the fact that over 80% of smoke is invisible and showed children breathing in the smoke, with the message ‘If you could see the damage you would stop’. PHE re-ran this campaign in June and July 2013.

From December 2012 to March 2013, the Department ran the 'Mutation' campaign, which dramatised the invisible damage caused by cigarettes by showing a tumour growing on a cigarette, with the message that every 15 cigarettes you smoke causes a mutation that can become cancer.

In December 2013, PHE launched a new health harms campaign called ‘Toxic cycle’, showing how smoking makes the blood thick and dirty with toxins, which circulate through the body in seconds increasing the chances of a heart attack or stroke.

Further information on the harms of smoking can be found on the Smokefree website at:

www.nhs.uk/smokefree and also in the range of Smokefree support products.