THE government has launched a new burst of advertising to coincide with the New Year to encourage potential quitters to ring the NHS Smoking Helpline on 0800 169 0 169.
Last year the helpline took 10,000 calls in the first week of the New Year, around three times the average call volume.
The helpline is open seven days a week from 7am until 11pm with specialist counsellors available between 1pm and 9pm. Calls before 7am and after 11pm are transferred to an automated service, which informs callers of service operational hours and enables them to order literature.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
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