Kick It aims to tackle smoking across the area and offers carbon monoxide and lung age tests to demonstrate ageing effects.
A tuk tuk vehicle is to take to the streets of Hammersmith and Fulham in a bid to encourage residents to kick the smoking habit.
The scheme is part of Kick It, the Borough’s Stop Smoking Service, which aims to tackle smoking across the area by raising awareness.
During the journey Kick It staff will offer carbon monoxide and lung age tests to smokers and also demonstrate the ageing effects it can have on skin.
Toby Fairs-Billam, Head of Kick It, said: “This mobile freedom will give us the means to penetrate harder to reach communities.
“We’re helping smokers to quit from a wide range of geographical areas such as industrial sites, retail parks and housing estates.”
Mr Fairs-Billam believes the unorthodox method of promotion is an innovative way of publicising a subject he feels many have become tired of.
“Truth be told, it’s become a boring subject, and we are not preaching, but we aim to breathe new life into it by making it a bit quirky,” he said.
The initiative comes as plans to outlaw smoking in public places took a new twist this week with calls from the British Medical Association to ban smoking in cars.
Dr Vivienne Nathanson, the BMA’s director of professional activities, says that smoking causes 80,000 deaths each year in England and six million worldwide.
Dr Nathanson said: “The current UK government prefers voluntary measures or ‘nudging’ to bring about public health change, but this stance has been shown to fail time and time again.”
Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ lobby group Forest, criticised the proposal for persecuting smokers.
He said: “Banning smoking in cars would also criminalise a lone adult who chose to light up in his own car.
“Legislation is a gross over-reaction. What next, a ban on smoking in the home?”
