Stoptober 2025
Welcome! Every October, we run Stoptober, our annual mass participation stop smoking campaign.
The goal is simple: we want to encourage the remaining 5.3 million smokers in England to quit for good, by showing that they don’t need to quit on their own.
Stoptober is a great opportunity to promote the range of national and local support available and, as a result, increase successful quit attempts. And that’s where you come in.
Smoking is still a significant issue.
• Smoking remains the single biggest cause of preventable ill health and death.
• Smoking is estimated to cost society £21.3 billion per year in England.
• This includes an annual £18 billion loss to productivity through smoking-related lost earnings, unemployment, and early death.
• 230,000 households live in smoking-induced poverty.
• Smoking is estimated to cost the NHS and social care £3 billion per year, resources that could be freed up to deliver millions more appointments, scans, and operations. • Using willpower alone remains the most common approach to quitting smoking. This is in spite of the fact it’s been proven to be the least effective.