A new 5 million pounds research centre is to investigate ways of reducing the prevalence of smoking.Professor John Britton who is leading the five year project in Nottingham said that the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies will also look at making tobacco safer for those smokers who cannot or will not quit. He said: "At the moment we are just killing people. It (smoking) is the biggest public health disaster in the history of the UK and we have still got to deal with it. There is a tendency to think that because we have banned smoking in public places, that we have sorted it out. But the fact is that there are 10 million smokers in the UK, half of which will die from a disease caused by their smoking 10 years earlier than they should have done." He added: "Part of the research will be to find ways of helping people who can't stop using nicotine to see if we can give it to them in a different way, that is less harmful. The whole point of this research is to find better ways of helping people quit and better ways of preventing people from starting. The new centre is expected to open immediately and will work with researchers at six other organisations currently conducting similar work into ways of reducing the number of people smoking. It will then provide its findings to policy-makers and health professionals, both in the UK and in Europe. The centre is being paid for out of a £20 million pot put forward by several different charities, trusts, Government bodies and health organisations. The remaining £15 million will be spent on looking at issues such as diet, exercise and drug and alcohol abuse by academics in Newcastle, Cardiff, Belfast and Cambridge. Professor Ian Diamond, chief executive of the Economic and Social Research Council which has put forward some of the money, said: "There have been big improvements in health and life expectancy over the last century." "However, the UK still faces challenges to improve public health and ensure that as a society we benefit from longer and healthier lives."

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