THE EVENING Times has been praised for helping people stub out cigarettes after it was revealed Glasgow is leading the way in the battle against smoking.

Our health campaigns Glas-goals and Clear the Air, played a key part in new figures showing amazing results.

Almost 60,000 people living in the most deprived areas of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde have tried to stop - and nearly 20,000 said they had successfully given up for at least a month.

Research shows that those who stop smoking for 28 days are five times more likely to stay smoke-free.

New Scottish Government figures revealed the total for the Glasgow area were 100,879 attempting to quit and 35,108 managing to stay off the cigs for at least a month between April 2011 and March 2014.

An NHSGGC spokeswoman said: "Over the last three years we helped more than 35,000 of our residents successfully quit smoking with more than 19,000 of these smokers from our least affluent areas. We are grateful for the efforts of a number of our partners who have supported us in getting across the stop smoking message.

"Through successful health improvement campaigns with the Evening Times, namely Glas-goals and Clear the Air, we have been able to reach a wide audience and this has undoubtedly helped us with this achievement."

The Evening Times worked closely with the health board on both our campaigns.

Glas-goals had the aims of Glasgow's citizens walking a million miles; stubbing out a million cigarettes and shedding half a million pounds in weight over the course of a year.

Our award-winning Clear the Air drive promoted services to help people quit cigarettes and saw a huge increase in successful attempts to give up.

NHS Lanarkshire also worked with us to Clear the Air and results show that 17,110 people quit smoking for at least a month.

janice.burns@ eveningtimes.co.uk