The British Parliament gave anti-smoking forces a special “Valentine” on Feb. 14, voting to ban smoking in public places. Seventh-day Adventists in the United Kingdom were among those petitioning the government to enact the rule.

The Health Ministries department of the Adventist Church in Britain says it is delighted with the result: “This was our main objective when I was an executive committee member of the Tobacco Control Alliance, and it was also the purpose of a number of letters sent by me to successive Secretaries of State for Health,” says Pastor Richard Willis, health ministries director for the church in Britain. “It is rewarding to see that years of effort have paid off as it is easy to be discouraged in the face of massive industry pressure.”

Seventh-day Adventists have always pioneered in smoking cessation, notably through the renowned Five Day Plan to Stop Smoking (5DP) program that has helped 20-25 million people worldwide quit the habit.

When U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Luther Terry’s report on the dangerous effects of smoking came out in 1964, the Adventist Church had one of the few stop-smoking programs widely available. As ANN reported on the 40th anniversary of the Terry report, the “Five-Day Plan” was the original smoking-cessation program, and it had been started in 1959. Revised in 1984, it now is called “Breathe Free.”

Several countries adopted the “Breathe Free” principles as national smoke-free initiatives. In Poland, for example, the Adventist church cooperated with the Cancer Institute to promote a tobacco-free lifestyle, which received nationwide attention.

Nearly a century before Terry, however, Ellen G. White and Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, pioneering Adventists who taught on health matters, wrote extensively on the dangers of smoking, the former through her many writings and the latter in his book “Tobaccoism” and articles in “Good Health” magazine.

The most recent Adventist contribution to the stop smoking scene is the development of the drug Zyban by Linda Hyder Ferry, M.D., M.P.H, associate professor of preventive medicine at the School of Medicine and School of Public Health at Loma Linda University, to help relieve quitters’ depression, one of the side-effects of stopping smoking.

It is also largely through the work of the International Commission for the Prevention of Alcohol and drug dependence, or ICPA, and the U.K.‘s National Committee for the Prevention of Alcohol and drug dependence, or NCPA, both of which are sponsored by the Adventist Church, that the forthcoming Cricket World Cup in Bermuda will be smoke-free.