Mobile smokers get help to quit
by Helen Keegan
As I’m sure all our English readers are aware, as of 6am on the 1st July, smoking was banned in all public places that are under-cover - that means, all bars, clubs, work vehicles, offices, restaurants, shops, shopping malls and more besides. Arguably this is long overdue and as a non-smoker, I’m absolutely delighted that I’ll now be able to go out on the town and come back smelling of me instead of someone else’s foul smelling tobacco smoke. Anyway, I digress.
There are lots of folks who are going to find this new law very hard to deal with so the news that Manchester NHS (National Health Service) is using text messaging to help smokers quit is good news indeed. It’s a relatively simple campaign and you text in a keyword (depending on which advert you’ve been exposted to on a beermat, on the radio, on a poster, whatever) and you get a call back with details of services available to you to help you quit.
I think they could easily have gone one step further. A friend and colleague of mine, Steve Flaherty, developed Textotine several years ago now (it was way ahead of its time - let me know if you’re interested in helping to get it off the ground again). This service was more like a quit smoking buddy and kept track of how much money you’d saved, how many days you’d been smoke free, and tips and hints to keep you on the straight and narrow which could be a sponsored service or run using premium rate text messaging or some kind of subscription service.
Anyone know of any other mobile stop-smoking services?
