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The Government should help people stop smoking through a ‘polluter pays’ levy on tobacco companies, says a policy paper funded by AstraZeneca.

The levy could raise an estimated £700 million in its first year, it is claimed, “enough to fund tobacco control and smoking cessation programmes with money to spare”. It could support a national walk-in ‘stop smoking’ service in pharmacies, the paper suggests.

Getting to the heart of the matter: a national action plan for tackling cardiovascular disease argues that the government should appoint a national CVD director in the DHSC and commit to reducing CVD incidence by 20 per cent.

The neighbourhood service envisaged under the 10 Year Health Plan should be properly resourced and new neighbourhood health contracts should support joined-up, patient-focused, value-based interventions, the paper says.

It cites the success of the Community Pharmacy Hypertension Case Finding Service, which has delivered over 2.8 million blood pressure screenings and detected more than 225,000 cases of high blood pressure, which may otherwise have gone undetected.

However, while the service has increased the accessibility of screening, “a lack of join-up across conditions in the wider CVD spectrum and no integration of treatment initiation has limited the impact of the service” the paper argues.

“There is also an opportunity to build on the success of the service to move beyond a condition-specific approach, via the NHS Health Check, and reach even more people,”, the paper says. Community-based case finding should be expanded to cover more conditions, such as diabetes, as well as treatment initiation in community pharmacy.

In 2026 all pharmacists will be independent prescribers upon registration, the paper notes. “Coupled with the Government’s ambition to introduce a community pharmacy prescribing service, this presents an opportunity to join up screening, the initiation of treatment and ongoing support … This approach, in line with the 10 Year Health Plan’s ambition for community pharmacy to play a bigger role in screening for long-term conditions, could also benefit other long-term conditions, including diabetes, cholesterol and CKD.”

The paper received input from Community Pharmacy England, the National Pharmacy Association and the Company Chemists’ Association alongside a number of charities and clinical organisations.