Smoking could be banned in play areas as part of a plan to create a "smoke-free" generation in Hull.
Smugglers flooding the city with counterfeit cigarettes will also be targeted in a radical shake-up of the city's tobacco control plan.
Hull's Health and Wellbeing Board (HWB) has approved plans to cut funding for stop- smoking services from £1.4m to just £340,000 for next year.
However, the money saved will be diverted into initiatives such as creating "smoke-free zones" in places where children congregate, such as play areas.
Ahead of the board meeting, Hull's director of public health Julia Weldon said the new plan was not a "disinvestment" in tobacco control. She said: "This was a ten-year-old stop-smoking service and we are now looking at a different approach, focusing on stopping smoking and reducing access to illegal products."
Ms Weldon said smoke-free zones could be up and running within six to 12 months following consultation.
She said: "We need to engage with communities and we need to create a social movement of anti-smoking, not anti-smoker."
Since the smoking ban in 2007, almost 2,000 people have started smoking, despite a concerted campaign by Hull City Council to tackle the problem.
Free nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) such as patches and gum will also be stopped from next month.
Concern has been raised over the public health plan to slash the smoking cessation budget by £1m as the city still has one of the highest rates of smoking in the country.
However, the new plan will target groups of smokers where there has previously been success in encouraging them to quit.
People with smoking- related complaints such as coronary heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease will be given help to stop and manual workers, who have higher rates of smoking, will be prioritised, along with pregnant women and young people.
Part of the new approach includes enforcement to make tobacco less affordable by clamping down on counterfeit cigarettes and regulation to stop shops selling black market products.
Children and young people will also be targeted to stop them smoking in the first place.
At the board meeting, Councillor Colin Inglis, chairman of the HWB, said concerns had been raised over the decision to stop funding free NRT in case it leads to a sharp rise in GPs being asked for prescriptions by patients seeking to stop smoking.
To tackle this, the board has earmarked £250,000, set aside for six months, to help Hull Clinical Commissioning Group deal with any additional prescribing costs .
Another £100,000 will be set aside to fund tougher enforcement action against cigarette smuggling.
Councillor Helena Spencer said: "As a council, we are criticised for throwing money at a problem and now we are being criticised for taking money away because it hasn't had the results we were hoping for.
"It just has to be a targeted approach."
1,600 smoking deaths in three yearsAbout 75,000 adults in Hull smoke, meaning 34 per cent of the city's population are lighting up, compared with a national average of 19 per cent.
However, in the most deprived areas of the city, 50 per cent of people smoke.
More than 1,600 people in Hull have died through smoking in the past three years and it is estimated smoking cost the city £97.5m, from lost productivity at work through smoking breaks to cleaning up cigarette-related litter.
Even in more affluent parts of the city, 38 per cent of children are growing up in homes where at least one person smokes, a figure that rises to 65 per cent in the poorest areas.
Fewer pregnant women are now smoking by the time they give birth, with numbers falling from 29.6 per cent in 2005-06 to 21.6 per cent last year.
However, more boys aged 15 are picking up the habit, with 15 per cent smoking in 2012 compared to 12 per cent in 2002. Although the number of girls smoking at 15 has halved – from 48 per cent in 2002 to 24 per cent in 2012 – it is still double the target set by the Government of 12 per cent by next year.
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