Everyone is getting savvier about their health! We know certain things are bad for us, but habits are hard to break so here at The Lifestyle Guide, we are LOVING Oxfords BOLD statement to be a smoking free county by 2025!
They have an ambitious plan with restaurants and bars first on the list and workplace cigarette breaks soon after which was agreed by public health officials way before the pandemic began.
Yes, to some this is scary, but it's a huge step in the right direction in order to make us really think about what we are putting into our body and then leaning on our fabulous but overstretched NHS (and according to One Small Step costs our country over £12.6 billion per year) when our health starts suffering from a totally self inflicted terrible habit.
Oxfordshire's public health director, Ansaf Azhar commented "It is not about telling people not to smoke. It is about moving and creating an environment in which not smoking is encouraged and they are empowered to do so. "But that is not going to happen overnight."
The cost of smoking on your bank account!
On average, smokers smoke 10 cigarettes a day; with a packet of cigarettes costing anything from £10.80 that’s a spend of £37.80 per week, or £1971 per year. For that you could buy:
The average cost of a holiday abroad (when we are allowed) including hotel, flights and entertainment is approximately £1,000 for 9 nights. That’s two holidays with additional spending money.
The average food shop in 2020 for a family was £68 per week, that’s just over 30 weeks of shopping.
A large Americano at Costa costs £2.40, you could get a coffee every day for £16.80, less that the £37.80 for the smoking habit
The average price of a litre of fuel in the UK is now around £1.24 for petrol and £1.30 for diesel; that means you can fill a small car with petrol for £49.60 and with diesel for £52
The average monthly cost of owning a cat or a rabbit is £94, that’s 2.5 weeks of no smoking
We think it's a great initiative and hope that more areas of the UK follow suit. In the meantime, we will just have to be grateful for the age restrictions of 18+ to buy cigarettes in the UK.
Keep healthy people!