Open Sight

Open Sight's Smoking and Sight Loss Campaign

Open Sight has launched a campaign to raise awareness of the risks that smoking causes to sight and to have a warning printed on cigarette packets.

Give up cigarettes – or you could lose your sight in later life. That’s the message to teenagers from a Hampshire charity, who have today ( 10th January ) launched a campaign urging them to quit smoking for the New Year to help preserve their eyesight. Opensight, the charity for the blind and partially-sighted in Hampshire, are also lobbying the government, calling on them to include a warning on cigarette packets that smoking causes blindness.

The charity believes many young people don’t realise that smoking can pose significant risks to their vision in later life and insists that there aren’t enough government warnings about the dangers. More than 50 thousand people in the UK currently suffer from age-related macular disease (AMD) as a direct result of smoking. AMD is a condition where cells in the eye deteriorate so that vision becomes blurred or distorted – and in serious cases disappears completely.

Hampshire medical researchers are backing the Opensight new year campaign, claiming multiple studies show that smoking more than doubles the risk of AMD. Consultant Opthamologist Professor Andrew Lotery, who is based at the University of Southampton, warns that although smoking is one of the major risks to eyesight, it is also one of the easiest to treat – by simply stubbing out the cigarettes.

Latest statistics show that almost one in four people in Hampshire smokes, with 164,000 teenagers taking up the habit in the UK every year.

Launching the new year anti-smoking campaign, Chief Executive of Opensight, Chris Hedges, commented:

“ It’s critical that we try to help get the message across to teenagers in the county that smoking can have potentially devastating effects on their eyesight.

“There are clear government warnings on cigarette packets about health risks such as lung disease and throat cancer, but there is relatively little awareness about the dangers of smoking. It’s high time the government acted on the growing medical evidence and properly warned young people of the dangers before its too late.”

Current research shows that one in three people will suffer from age-related eye disease by the age of 75 and although there are some treatments available, there is currently no cure.