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** 18 July 2023
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** UK
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** Rishi Sunak looks to tighten rules as pressure grows for disposable vape ban in UK (#1)
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** Living with lung cancer: ‘I recorded a message saying goodbye to my four girls’ (#2)
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** Opinion: Vape sector will bear the blame for disposables ban (#3)
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** Opinion: The rise of the boomerang smoker mum (#4)
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** International
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** Germany: Want to quit smoking? Here's what the science says (#5)
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** UK
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**

Rishi Sunak is privately signalling a crackdown on youth vaping as pressure grows for a ban on disposable devices. The prime minister is said to be taking a close personal interest in a package being drawn up to restrict teenagers’ access to highly addictive products, with measures expected later this year.

Restrictions on advertising and flavours that appeal to children are understood to be the measures most likely to be implemented, potentially including a ban on vape companies sponsoring sports teams. Compulsory licensing for retailers selling vapes is also being considered for England, after Scotland introduced a registration scheme to aid the enforcement of rules preventing sales to under-18s.

Experts are split, however, over an outright ban on the disposable products most popular with teenagers. Councils last week called for a total ban on single-use products, which can be bought for under £5, citing littering and environmental concerns as well as the health risks. However, others fear that a ban would drive a black market, making it harder for products to be recycled effectively.

Ministers have in recent months become increasingly receptive to regulation, which is said to have polled well among target voters, and No 10 is said to be “very interested” in further measures. Sunak has privately said he is “going to do something about it” and is “upset” about the child-friendly flavouring and cartoon-style packaging used on some products. No decisions have yet been taken but proposals are expected in the autumn, after a recent call for evidence by the Department of Health and Social Care.

Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, said it was “striking” that the rise in youth vaping had clearly been driven by the availability of disposable products. “Given the rise in youth vaping, which is genuine, it’s appropriate to think about adding additional protections and closing loopholes,” she said.

But Bauld said most young people got disposables from friends or peers, adding: “Outright bans on a category of product can have unintended consequences. Prohibition in history hasn’t been a great success story [and] any ban would need complementary action on the illicit trade.”

She said taxes to make disposable vapes less affordable to children would be a better approach and urged caution on restricting flavourings given many adults use fruit-flavoured and sweet vapes. “If you wanted to reduce youth vaping, I wouldn’t say flavours would be the first line of attack. Price and promotion are the two areas to focus on,” she said.

Source: The Times, 18 July 2023

See also: ASH response to vaping consultation calls on government to urgently implement four high impact interventions ([link removed])

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Cathy Hunt was diagnosed with lung cancer two days before her 50th birthday. Now 58, she tells Paul Gallagher the effects 40 years of smoking have had on her life. She started smoking aged 11:

“By the time I was pocket money age, part-time job age, I was well into smoking. By 16 I was smoking nearly 15 a day. You only started thinking about the health risks when the tobacco companies were saying people should smoke “low tar” cigarettes as they were better for you, so I switched to a low tar brand. Then they stopped making that particular brand, so I went back to smoking normal cigarettes.

“I’d had a bad cough for quite a few years but just put it down to having a smokers’ cough. Looking back now, not cancer-wise, but health-wise, as a non-smoker I had lots of other little things that were wrong with my health that I never really took a lot of notice of. I just put it down to foods I was eating or something like that.

“I had no suspicion it was going to be cancer. I went on my own to see the doctor as I hadn’t actually told anybody what was going on. I can remember thinking it must be more serious because of how quickly everything had happened, with the tests, scans and getting the results. There was just me, the doctor and the nurse in the room.”

“Everybody thinks cancer is something that happens to someone else and it doesn’t happen to you, but it does happen to you. The only way to prevent smoking-related disease is to stop smoking. It’s as simple as that.”

Cathy has been part of a Smoking Survivors campaign run by Fresh, the North East’s programme for tobacco control. For more information visit [link removed]

Source: i News, 15 July 2023

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In this piece, George Nott writes on how the vaping sector should take more responsibility in reducing the environmental impact of disposable vapes, as otherwise they will face an outright ban.

Nott writes that a total ban on disposable vapes is fast becoming a genuine prospect, as Local Government Association’s urges for them to be outlawed by 2024. He writes that the devices are “a major headache for local authorities” and quotes Cllr David Fothergill saying that they “blight our streets as litter, are a hazard in our bin lorries, are expensive and difficult to deal with in our recycling centres.”

Nott outlines the clear environmental impact of disposable vapes, citing a report for the Ocean Conservancy stating that they are “among the 10 most collected items during beach clean-ups” and a joint investigation from TBIJ and Material Focus finding that over half are thrown away.

Nott observes that many vape retailers and trading bodies are content with “more bins and more posters about those bins” and are merely paying lip service to the concerns. He highlights a scheme with disposable brand Relx where consumers can post ten used disposables of any brand of vape to the retailer, and receive one free vape in return, which he suggests could be scaled up and would have a better chance at staving off the industry’s “existential threat”.

Source: The Grocer (paywalled), 17 July 2023

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Lucy Denyer, Deputy Editor of the Telegraph Magazine, writes of a ‘boomerang’ effect in smoking relapse she has experienced and noticed in her peers: “As I hit my mid-40s, I’m suddenly noticing a whole plethora of similarly aged women who have taken up again a vice they thought they’d ditched years ago.”

Denyer worries that she and her friends are complacent in their beliefs that social smoking isn’t too harmful, as new modelling carried out by Cancer Research UK for the Government suggests the number of women with lung cancer will overtake the number of men for the first time this year, and that the gap is set to widen by 2040. And lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in the UK – one in five – and has one of the worst cancer survival rates.

“What’s important to understand in this is that smoking rates in men have always been higher than women – even at the peak of women smoking, males have higher smoking rates,” says Alizée Froguel, the charity’s prevention policy manager. “So it’s not that women are smoking more, but that the rate of smoking [for men] peaks earlier, which means lung cancer incidents in men [which peaked earlier] have started falling earlier than women. And there’s a lag with cancer, so these cancer cases are linked to historic smoking. But the smoking of today leads to the cancer cases of tomorrow.”

Denyer also points to a 17-year-long study by Columbia University suggested that the risk of lung cancer death for “social smokers” – those who smoke less than 10 cigarettes per day – is not substantially lower than those who smoke more than 20 a day.

“Each cigarette will produce a little spike of risk,” says Prof Nick Hopkinson of the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College. “There’s research that suggests that for a pack of 20 cigarettes, half the risk of that is from the first cigarette.” That stands even if you’re only smoking a couple a week. “Inhaling even a small amount of smoke sets off that inflammatory process in the lungs,” he says.

“It makes blood thicker and blood clots more likely to happen. It’s just immensely harmful.” On social smoking, “it is important to note that there are no safe levels of smoking, so even light or occasional smoking can increase the risk.” adds Froguel.

Source: The Telegraph, 16 July 2023

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** International
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Smoking is one of the biggest killers, with around 14% of deaths worldwide attributed to smoking-related illnesses, according to World Health Organization data in 2019. Many of those deaths are attributed to rising smoking rates in lower and middle-income countries. And more recent studies show that to be an ongoing trend.

"Smoking is a massive global health burden. There will be a billion deaths globally in this century from smoking-related illnesses if we don't bring smoking rates down," said Hazel Cheeseman, deputy chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), a UK-based public heath charity.

Quitting aids include nicotine replacement therapies, such as patches, gums or inhalators (also known as inhalers) that slowly release nicotine, stopping the urge to smoke. Nicotine itself isn't harmful, but the smoke you inhale from cigarettes is. Then, there are medications, such as varenicline and bupropion. "Although medications are a more expensive treatment, they're enormously cost effective when you look at the impact of smoking on health and on health systems," said Cheeseman.

"There is good evidence that e-cigarettes can help you stop smoking. But they are a non-medically licensed product, so they're not administered as medication," said Cheeseman. She said e-cigarettes are safe in the short to medium term, or, at least, less harmful than conventional cigarettes. But she added that "it's unlikely [vaping] products are risk-free in the long term."

The scientific consensus says that using multiple methods at the same time is your best bet. A 2020 meta-analysis of more than 700 clinical studies found that combining several methods has the best results for helping people achieve sustained abstinence from cigarettes. While all individual therapies were more effective than a placebo — essentially, doing nothing — it's when you combine them together that you really start to see results.

"The most effective way to stop smoking is with behavioural support that helps you create strategies to deal with the psychological side of cravings, [combined with] medications that help deal with the physical side effects of stopping smoking," said Cheeseman.

Source: Deustche Welle, 17 July 2023

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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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