View this email in your browser ([link removed])
** 21 February 2020
------------------------------------------------------------
** UK
------------------------------------------------------------
** Oxfordshire could become England's first 'smoke-free' county (#1)
------------------------------------------------------------
** Survey: British people are concerned by negative media coverage of vaping (#2)
------------------------------------------------------------
** International
------------------------------------------------------------
** USA: Study claiming vaping doubles heart attack risk retracted for being 'unreliable' (#3)
------------------------------------------------------------
** USA: Vaping companies launch disposable flavoured e-cigarettes to circumvent restrictions (#4)
------------------------------------------------------------
** Link of the week
------------------------------------------------------------
** Report: Standardised Packaging for Tobacco Products in England (#5)
------------------------------------------------------------
** UK
------------------------------------------------------------
**
Oxfordshire could become England’s first ‘smoke free’ county under an ambitious new scheme to cut the number of people smoking cigarettes. At a meeting of Oxfordshire’s Health Improvement Partnership Board on Thursday 20th February, a plan to reduce the number of smokers in the county was discussed, as was the cost to society. Leader of Oxfordshire County Council, Cllr Ian Hudspeth, is also chair of the LGA Wellbeing board.
According to data from the charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) smoking costs the Oxfordshire economy a total of £121.7m each year. This includes spending on healthcare, workplace productivity, social care and house fires.
A report to the improvement board said the government had set a target to reduce the number of people smoking in the UK to 5% of the population by 2030. The board was told this would be considered a ‘smoke free’ society because smoking would be so rare. The aim for Oxfordshire is to go further and become smoke free on the same guidelines by 2025, becoming the first county in England to do so. Approximately 10% of the county’s population are currently regular smokers, which equates to approximately 54,804 people.
Source: Oxford Mail, 21 February 2020
------------------------------------------------------------
Read Article ([link removed])
**
A survey, carried out by Google Surveys for British vaping retailer Electric Tobacconist, has sought the UK public's views on using e-cigarettes as a smoking-cessation tool, and if they believe the devices have a public-health benefit. Most people who took part in the survey (34.9%) did not believe that vaping has a public health benefit and 26% said they were not sure, while 24.1% said it was possible that e-cigarettes were good for public health and just 15% believed they were beneficial.
Would respondents urge a smoker they knew to switch to e-cigarettes to kick their unhealthy habit, as per NHS advice? Almost half (48.9%) said no, they did not think it was their business to do so, 31.5% said that they might try to convince a smoker to transition to vaping and 19.6% said they definitely would urge a smoker they knew to switch to e-cigarettes.
Respondents were also asked if they thought e-cigarettes would help to make Britain a smoke-free country, as the government is aiming for by 2030. A total of 42.7% didn't think so, while 17.2% believed they might be able to help with the ambitious target. Meanwhile, 11.2% agreed that they could help and more than a quarter (28.9%) did not know whether vaping could help with the goal or not.
Source: PR Newswire, 20 February 2020
------------------------------------------------------------
Read Article ([link removed])
** International
------------------------------------------------------------
**
One of the America's best-known tobacco researchers is under fire this week after one of his federally funded vaping studies was retracted and other academics are calling for federal review of some of his other influential anti-vaping research.
The retracted study, by University of California, San Francisco medical school professor Stanton Glantz and published in Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA), said vaping doubled the risk of heart attacks. It was paid for primarily by the second of two $20 million grants awarded to Glantz and UCSF in 2018 from the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration to research tobacco and e-cigarettes. In July, USA TODAY reported on questions about the study and another researcher's conclusion that the majority of the heart attacks happened before people started vaping.
The timing of Glantz's recent work is of particular importance as it came as the Trump administration considered restricting the sale of flavoured electronic cigarettes. Glantz's work is often used by anti-vaping advocates in and outside of government to argue for stricter regulations.
New York University professor David Abrams, who called for the retraction with a group of 16 academics, scientists and other public health experts, is now drafting letters to NIH's Office of Research Integrity and UCSF's president to request investigations of other Glantz research. Abrams said he hopes others who signed the letter, including fellow NYU professor and tobacco researcher Ray Niaura, University of Michigan economics professor Ken Warner and Marcus Munafo, editor in chief of the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, will support the inquiry.
Glantz and his co-author, Dharma Bhatta, told JAHA during the review process that they addressed the discrepancy by only including heart attacks that occurred after 2007, when vaping started in the U.S. The journal asked them to prove their finding again, but the researchers said they could no longer access the data.
"Given these issues, the editors are concerned that the study conclusion is unreliable," JAHA said on Tuesday, when it retracted the study.
Source: USA Today, 20 February 2020
------------------------------------------------------------
Read Article ([link removed])
**
Some vaping companies in the US have started to sell flavoured disposable e-cigarettes to exploit a loophole in the Food and Drug Administration's recent ban on flavoured vaping products. These disposable e-cigarettes are sold under brands like Puff Bar, Stig and Fogg in flavours such as pink lemonade, blueberry ice and tropical mango — and the flavoured vaping ban does not apply to them because they cannot be refilled, and are thrown away after the cartridge is empty.
Appearing to skirt FDA regulations, such brands and cheaply available knock-offs manufactured in China often operate with unclear ownership and have no ties to formal trade associations. The explosion of brightly coloured, fruity flavoured disposable vapes follows the FDA's February 6 ban on refillable nicotine e-cigarettes with any flavour except for tobacco and menthol.
The ban was intended to reduce youth uptake of vaping. The FDA confirmed that the flavour restriction does not apply to 'self-contained, disposable products,' but only to rechargeable ones that use pods or cartridges prefilled with a nicotine solution.
The FDA's top tobacco regulator said it can still go after any vaping product that appeals to teenagers. “If we see a product that is targeted to kids, we will take action,” Mitch Zeller, who heads the agency's tobacco centre, said in a statement.
Source: Mail Online, 20 February 2020
------------------------------------------------------------
Read Article ([link removed])
** Link of the week
------------------------------------------------------------
**
A new report released by the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Policy Evaluation Project, and funded by the British Heart Foundation, has found that twice as many smokers notice the health warnings on cigarette packs before they notice the branding since the introduction of the plain packaging law in the UK. In addition, three times as many smokers find the packaging less appealing now that branding has been stripped from tobacco packaging and the size of the health warning has increased.
Read the full report here: [link removed]
------------------------------------------------------------
Have you been forwarded this email? Subscribe to ASH Daily News here. ([link removed])
For more information call 020 7404 0242, email
[email protected] (mailto:
[email protected]) or visit www.ash.org.uk
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.
============================================================
Our mailing address is:
Action on Smoking and Health
6th Floor New House
Hatton Garden
London
EC1N 8JY
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can ** update your preferences ([link removed])
or ** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
