Getting ready for No Smoking Day on Wednesday, March 13, youngsters in Pembrokeshire cooked up a real treat this week - a bowl of poisons from cigarettes.
Three million smokers will try and give up smoking on No Smoking Day - for all sorts of reasons: to save money, to smell better or for the sake of their children. But most of all, the smokers want to give up the 4,000 chemicals in cigarettes that can cause illness and death. Apart from nicotine, tar and carbon monoxide, these include ammonia (toilet cleaner), arsenic (rat poison), butane (lighter fluid), naphthalene (moth balls) and formaldehyde as well as 60 cancer causing agents.
The budding cooks stirred up all these 'ingredients' to show their friends the effect of smoking and to encourage anyone that wants to, to try giving up.
"With help available in most parts of the county, and patches and gum now on prescription from your GP, there has never been a better time to try quitting," said Lynne Carroll, smoking cessation advisor for Dyfed Powys Health Authority. "By setting a day and thinking about how you will manage to avoid each cigarette beforehand, you have a good chance of joining the 40,000 smokers who will quit for good next Wednesday."
Every surgery has details about No Smoking Day and local pharmacies can help smokers choose the right product to help overcome the withdrawal.
The wbesite http://www.nosmokingday.org.uk">www.nosmokingday.org.uk has details of this year's Quit and Win competition.
For information on local support for giving up, a 24-hour helpline is available on 0800 169 0 169 or smokers can contact Ian Scale, health promotion officer (tobacco control) for Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire Health Promotion Service on (01437) 766326.