Welcome to the This Is The North Podcast, your source of transformative conversations. An intentional challenge to the systems holding back the North of England. Hosted by Alison Dunn, an award-winning charity chief executive and former solicitor. This podcast is supported by the Society Matters Foundation and is dedicated to curating and sharing knowledge, powering the change we need for a more equal and inclusive society.
In this episode, Alison sits down with Ailsa Rutter OBE, director of Fresh and Balance, the organisations that have led the North East's work on tobacco and alcohol for two decades. It is a conversation about a problem many people assume was dealt with years ago, and about how much of the harm that remains lives not in the tobacco itself, but in the stories built around it.
Ailsa grew up in a house where almost everyone smoked. Her mother, her father and her grandmother were all forty a day, and one of her earliest memories is a car journey from Seahouses to Devon in the 1970s, unable to breathe and begging them to stop. By her own account she should have ended up a smoker. Instead she trained as a nurse, watched the same men return to her cardiac ward for a second bypass and then a third while still smoking, and eventually went to university in Brisbane to understand why telling someone to stop is not the same as helping them.
She has spent the years since taking that question apart, work recognised with an OBE and a medal from the World Health Organisation.
Her argument is precise and uncomfortable. Two in three long-term smokers are killed by what they smoke, and no consumer product has ever been invented that is guaranteed to be so lethal.
The filter on a cigarette does nothing to protect you; it was built to look as though it does. Counterfeit tobacco is no more dangerous than the branded packet. Smoking does not relieve stress, it manufactures the very tension it appears to soothe. These myths do their heaviest work in the communities with the least power to take them apart, which is why smoking rates remain highest among the most deprived and those struggling with their mental health.
And yet the North East has cut smoking by 62% in two decades, from the worst rate in England to very nearly the best. From the first of January next year, nobody born after the first of January 2009 will ever legally be sold tobacco, the first policy of its kind anywhere in the world.
Timestamps
00:00 The problem we think we already solved
01:14 From the worst in England to nearly the best
03:29 The myth that every young person vapes
06:07 Alcohol, and the harm we don't see
11:47 The filter that protects nothing
22:24 A smoke-free generation, explained
25:44 Illicit tobacco and the people who police it
29:05 The bill the industry says it pays
33:52 What the North East can learn from elsewhere
35:42 How to help someone you love quit
37:16 Closing thoughts
The question this conversation leaves us with is not whether smoking can be ended, but whether we choose to finish the job. Fresh and the region's directors of public health have named a date: 2040, a smoke-free North East. Knowing what this region has already achieved, Ailsa does not think that is naive. The people owed the truth about tobacco have always been handed the least of it. A generation born after January will grow up never being sold it at all.
If you are worried about someone, or want to stop, the Fresh Quit website is a one-stop shop for stop smoking support across the North East, including stories from people who have done it. Every council in the region funds a free stop smoking service, the NHS now runs a tobacco dependency treatment service for hospital patients, and free digital support is available around the clock through the Smoke Free app.
Host: Alison Dunn
Guest: Ailsa Rutter OBE
Resources:
This podcast is produced by Purpose Made.
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