Advice not forthcoming Dr Owen said the research found that less than half the women were given advice on giving up smoking by a health professional. Every opportunity should be taken to bring the subject up, and every opportunity taken to help women give up. When pregnant women do not receive any advice on smoking they assume it is okay to carry on. Dr Owen said primary care workers needed more training in how to help women give up smoking. She accepted that staff often worked under enormous pressure and with limited resources.
Smoking is an addiction and needs to be handled sensitively.
Like the whole NHS approach to smoking, it is ad hoc, patchy and based on the enthusiasm or the indifference of the people involved. ASH said the government should give encouragement, advice, and prescriptions of nicotine replacement therapy for women who smoke during pregnancy. Mary Newbone, director of policy for the National Childbirth Trust, warned that smoking was a complex problem, and that it would be wrong to blame women for refusing to give up the habit. They see it as a source of pleasure and a way to relieve stress. The approach should not be to blame women for smoking during pregnancy, but to look at ways to try to alleviate the stress in their lives so they are more able to give up.