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** 17 February 2020
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** UK
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** UK Budget may be delayed, says cabinet minister (#1)
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** NHS England: ICSs must move beyond ‘transformation’ (#2)
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** Man charged for illicit tobacco sales to children as young as six (#3)
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** International
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** Opinion: How Juul targets teenagers in the US (#4)
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** UK
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The Budget may be delayed, the transport secretary Grant Shapps said on Sunday, following Sajid Javid’s resignation as chancellor in Thursday’s UK government reshuffle. Downing Street would not confirm on Friday whether the scheduled March 11th date would be changed after Mr Javid chose to quit rather than accept full Number 10 control over the Budget.

But in the first acknowledgment from a senior minister that the Budget could be postponed, Mr Shapps said new chancellor Rishi Sunak may have to choose a new date. “I know that the Budget plans are well advanced but I also know that Rishi Sunak, the new Chancellor, may want time,” Mr Shapps told Sky News. “I haven’t heard whether the date of March is confirmed as yet. He is probably looking at it, I should think this week.”
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** The Budget, which sets government’s economic strategy for the whole parliament, has taken on even more significance since Mr Javid’s resignation. Mr Sunak is understood to be preparing to relax Britain’s fiscal rules in his first Budget, as he comes under pressure from Downing Street to increase spending. His predecessor Mr Javid insisted that Britain should run a balanced budget on current, or day-to-day, spending by 2023, but Downing Street has refused to confirm that Mr Sunak will stick to that target in his first Budget. The government is committed to holding a Budget by April 5 in preparation for the next tax year.
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Source: Financial Times, 16 February 2020
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Integrated care systems cannot focus purely on transformation, and will gradually move to taking on performance management jobs from NHS England and Improvement, the regulators’ chief operating officer Amanda Pritchard has said. However, she indicated in an interview with the Health Service Journal that, for most areas, “system oversight and scrutiny” would for now remain with NHSE/I regional teams, with only a very small number ready to take this on themselves. Details are expected to be set out in a new oversight framework Ms Pritchard has been developing, due to be published in the coming weeks.

Planning guidance for 2020-21 said ICSs have “two core roles: system transformation and collective management of system performance”. But Ms Pritchard said performance management was often misunderstood — and, for many ICSs, this would initially mean taking responsibility together for delivering and for improving care — rather than acting as local regulators. Even the 14 areas which have been approved as an ICS are not all seen as ready to take on the full “oversight” role, it is thought.

Last month’s NHS planning guidance said: “Every part of the country is moving towards becoming an integrated care system by April 2021 so 2020-21 will be a critical year… as we start working through ICSs and [sustainability and transformation partnerships] on a ‘system by default’ basis.” NHSE guidance has previously indicated systems need to be judged at a “maturing” level on its “matrix” to be named as an ICS; but the matrix is unclear on some key points, and NHSE’s previous director for system transformation said last year: “Essentially this isn’t going to be a pass [or] fail, hit the bar [or] don’t hit the bar.” Ms Pritchard said there would be a formal “bar” to pass, rather than an assumption all STPs would simply have their title changed and, where necessary, be given a lower level of responsibility.

Ms Pritchard said 2020-21 was a “fast track year” with an aim of getting the remaining 28 STPs to become ICSs. “There’s nothing like doing it for real as a way of building maturity at system level, as long as there is support in place to make sure people are able to do that,” she said. There are likely to be tranches of ICSs approved this spring, autumn and the following spring, and NHSE/I regional offices will work with STPs on that path.

Source: Local Government Chronicle, 14 February 2020
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A man has been sentenced after facing 10 separate charges for selling fake cigarettes and tobacco from his home, with four of the charges for selling cigarettes to children as young as six, according to Middlesbrough Council.

Catherine Cunningham, prosecuting for Middlesbrough Council, told the court that the case had been brought to the attention of the authorities after complaints were made to a housing group. Middlesbrough Council's Trading Standards set up covert CCTV cameras to monitor the man's front door. Ms Cunningham said that 95 suspected tobacco sales from the man's door step were caught on camera - 14 of which were to children - over the course of just four days in July 2019. A raid was then conducted on the man's home which discovered 15,980 cigarettes as well as 258 pouches of illicit hand-rolling tobacco. The seized tobacco did not have the required health warnings and was not in the required colour, upon later analysis it was found to be counterfeit.

The man admitted to selling cigarettes on and off from his home for about two years. He was given an eight-month prison sentence which was suspended for 18 months. He was also ordered to carry out 300 hours unpaid work and to pay a total of £3,596 in costs and charges.

Source: Daily Mail, 8 February 2020
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** International
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Nancy Jo Sales writes in the Guardian on Juul advertising tactics exposed in a recent US court case:

"When you read the lawsuit brought yesterday by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts against Juul Labs, claiming the e-cigarette company aggressively marketed its product to children and teens, you wonder if anyone at Juul ever thought to ask: 'Gee, do you think anybody will find this marketing strategy unseemly?' Or even: 'Do you think we could go to hell for this?'

"[...] The allegations laid out in the lawsuit are compelling and thoroughly appalling. It claims that Juul created, for its 2015 launch, an advertising campaign designed to target the “cool crowd” among young people. According to the lawsuit, the e-cigarette company hired young-looking models, photographed female models in 'sexually provocative' poses, and purchased advertising space for these images on countless websites frequented by underage consumers, including cartoonnetwork.com, seventeen.com, and Nickelodeon’s nick.com and nickjr.com – sites where pre-schoolers play games.

"Juul also purchased ads on a host of websites designed to help middle school and high school students with their homework, the lawsuit claims. 'You’re doing your math homework and up pops an ad for Juul,' the Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey, said at a news conference this week. The company also sought to recruit celebrities and social media influencers with large numbers of underage followers, such as Miley Cyrus and Instagram influencer Luka Sabbat.

" [...] The lawsuit against Juul underscores the degree to which the internet and social media have increased companies’ access to underage consumers. With kids on screens more than seven hours a day, according to a 2019 report from Common Sense Media, they are more available than ever to companies who want to influence them to buy their products, whether it be through entertainment websites, educational websites or social media platforms. Juul’s marketing on Twitter proved especially effective. Almost 81% of Twitter users who followed the official Juul Twitter account were between the ages of 13 and 20, according to the lawsuit. Juul’s quarterly retail sales were 'highly correlated with the number of Juul-related tweets that appeared on Twitter'."

Source: The Guardian, 14 February 2020
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ASH Daily News is a digest of published news on smoking-related topics. ASH is not responsible for the content of external websites. ASH does not necessarily endorse the material contained in this bulletin.

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