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We need “much heavier restrictions” on vapes, says former health minister
The former health department minister and sitting Health Select Committee chair, Steve Brine, has levelled criticisms at companies that produce vapes and e-cigarettes, telling New Statesman Spotlight that his committee was “unconvinced that the industry is doing all that it can to ensure its products don’t appeal to children”.
In a letter addressed to the Health Secretary, Steve Barclay on 19 July, Brine called for a range of measures to stop the rise of vaping among young people. “We believe there is a need for the government to consider much heavier restrictions on disposable vapes, in particular,” the Conservative MP wrote in the letter, and asked the government to consider “bringing the restrictions in line with those that apply to tobacco products”.
A recent report from Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) revealed that the proportion of children experimenting with vaping had “grown by 50 per cent year-on-year”. This is in line with an increase in exposure to vape promotion, with “more than half all children (53 per cent) aware of promotion in shops, and nearly a third (32 per cent) online”. ASH’s deputy chief executive, Hazel Cheeseman, said this was largely related to the “increased prominence of disposable vapes”, which are cheaper and often more visibly displayed at checkout counters.
But Cheeseman was keen to stress the differences between the use of vaping and e-cigarette products and ordinary tobacco smoking. “One is lethal and kills more than half of its users and the other is a valuable aid to quitting the really lethal thing,” Cheeseman told Spotlight. “The packaging needs to communicate that.” E-cigarettes act as a vital cessation tool for many smokers, and creating equivalent packaging restrictions between vapes and tobacco could threaten to promote the idea that vaping is “as or more harmful than smoking, [which is] a growing perception among smokers and the public in general”, she said.
According to Cheeseman, vaping and e-cigarettes should be positioned as “not something for kids to try, but as a quitting aid for the middle-aged smoker” – they need to be fundamentally “unglamorous”.
Source: The New Statesman, 2 August 2023
See also: ASH briefing addressing common myths about vaping and ASH Factsheet on Adult use of e cigarettes and ASH recommendations on youth vaping and disposable vapes
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Vaping misinformation could discourage smokers from giving up cigarettes, says ASH
Public health charity ASH believes the success of the government’s ‘swap to stop’ (where a million smokers were offered a free vaping starter kit together with behavioural support, to help them quit smoking) is threatened by growing concerns among smokers that vaping is at least as risky as smoking, if not more so.
According to ASH’s annual survey data, among the 1.8 million smokers who are yet to try vaping 43% believe e-cigarettes are as harmful or more than smoking up from 27% in 2019.
Dr Ruth Sharrock, clinical lead for tobacco dependency, North East and North Cumbria NHS Integrated Care Board, added that vaping was an important tool to support smokers to quit.
“When I see patients who smoke they are already sick with smoking-related disease and have often given up hope of ever stopping,” she said.
“Vaping is a valuable tool in our armoury to tackle smoking, particularly for patients who are heavily addicted. However, too many of my patients have seen alarmist media headlines that worry them and put them off giving vaping a go.”
Alongside the 2023 data on adult vaping ASH is publishing a ‘myth buster’ challenging common misrepresentations of the evidence on vaping. This has been developed with the country’s leading experts on smoking and vaping and provides evidence that:
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Vaping is NOT more harmful than smoking
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Vaping is NOT more addictive than smoking
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Vaping is NOT a proven gateway into smoking
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Nicotine DOES NOT damage young people’s brain development
Commenting on whether communicating more accurate perceptions of vaping would further fuel youth vaping, Hazel Cheeseman, deputy chief executive of ASH said: “It’s not because they think it’s safe that teenagers are experimenting with vaping. Harm perceptions are even more inaccurate among teens than the adult population.
“They are vaping because products appeal to them and are cheap and easily accessible. Further regulation will be more effective than scare mongering. Worse, if teenagers who experiment with vaping think that smoking is just as bad, then there is a risk they may be more likely to smoke.”
Source: Talking Retail, 3 August 2023
See also: ASH briefing addressing common myths about vaping and ASH press release: Four in ten smokers wrongly believe that vaping is as or more harmful as smoking
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Society of Research on Nicotine and Tobacco – Europe (SRNT-E) conference, September 11th-13th
SRNT-E is the European chapter of SRNT, an international a non-profit organisation with members in over 40 countries. Its aim is to advance understanding of nicotine and tobacco with the ultimate goal of reducing the harms associated with the use of these products.
With keynote speakers Dr. Nicola Lindson who will discuss “Using evidence synthesis to combat tobacco addiction: the work of the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group” and Prof. Jamie Brown on “The value of regular surveillance and evaluation in a changing tobacco control landscape: Insights from 17 years of monthly national surveys in England 2006-2023” and many more!
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ASH briefing addressing common myths about vaping
The persistent level of inaccurate reporting around vaping is likely a driver for the inaccurate perceptions of the relative harms of vaping compared to smoking. We have published a mythbuster to address this which we will also be distributing to the media.
See also: ASH press realse: Four in ten smokers wrongly believe that vaping is as or more harmful as smoking
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ASH Factsheet on Adult use of e cigarettes
We have also published a factsheet which analyses how behaviour and attitudes to e-cigarettes among adults aged 18 and over have changed over time. The Smokefree GB analysis conducted by ASH is based on data collected by YouGov for ASH and is carried out in the Spring each year.
The survey first started asking about e-cigarette use in 2010 and this update includes the results of the 2023 survey carried out in February and March 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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