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** 22 August 2023
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** UK
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** Doctor claims vaping is ‘more addictive’ than smoking cigarettes (#1)
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** Welsh group to study vape dependency among teens (#2)
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** International
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** Health Ministry launches new plan to stub out worrisome rise in Israeli smoking (#3)
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** UK
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** Doctor claims vaping is ‘more addictive’ than smoking cigarettes

During her regular segment on ITV's This Morning, Dr Sara Kayat said: "Often, the nicotine found within vapes can be significantly higher than those in cigarettes."

The doctor then stated vaping "can be even more addictive" compared to smoking cigarettes.
The NHS stresses: "Willpower is important when you're stopping smoking, but it's easier when combined with some extra support."

Source: Daily Express, 21 August 2023

Editorial note: The claim that vaping is more addictive than smoking cigarettes is not supported by the evidence.

Cigarettes carry the highest risk of addiction following initiation, due to cigarette designs that facilitate efficient inhalation of nicotine-laden smoke deep into the lung and from there to the brain, and constituents that reinforce the addictiveness of nicotine.

People addicted to nicotine because of smoking who switch to vaping may remain addicted, but they are reducing their risks of relapsing back to smoking which is far more harmful. The same is true for licensed nicotine products (NRT), which are licensed by the medicines regulator to help people stop smoking and prevent relapse back to smoking, the main reasons why ex-smokers vape. One analysis of US surveys of youth use between 2012 and 2019 found that young people who vape but don’t smoke are much less likely to be strongly nicotine dependent than those who smoke.

Cigarettes generally contain 10 to 15 mg nicotine per rod, which is 200 to 300 mg per pack of 20 cigarettes. A UK standard disposable vape with the highest legal level of nicotine (20 mg/ml) contains 2 ml of liquid which amounts to 40 mg of nicotine.

There is real-world evidence from population surveys in England that smokers who use an e-cigarette in a quit attempt are more likely to succeed in that attempt. Changes in the prevalence of e-cigarette use through to 2022 have been associated with increases in the success rate of quit attempts. This suggests that e-cigarettes have helped in the region of 30,000 to 50,000 additional smokers to successfully quit each year in England since 2013.

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 ([link removed]) to address this.
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** Welsh group to study vape dependency among teenshttps://www.asiantrader.biz/welsh-group-to-study-vape-dependency-among-teens/

Public Health Wales has established an Incident Response Group (IRG), which are more commonly used to organise the urgent containment of incidents of communicable disease, to urgently address the use of vaping products among children and young people.

The move follows the research by the School Health Research Network that showed that Wales experienced a rapid increase in vaping by secondary school-aged young people between 2019 and 2022, particularly among girls.

The IRG will immediately set out to gather evidence to confirm the incident, gain a perspective on its scope, and investigate and identify the causes. The group will then make recommendations to reduce the risk of ongoing harm and provide opportunities for collective action to address the problem.

Source: Asian Trader, 21 August 2023
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** International
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** Health Ministry launches new plan to stub out worrisome rise in Israeli smoking

With 8,000 deaths per year tied to tobacco and increasing numbers of youth taking up vaping, special task force offers a dozen recommendations to address problem.

The Health Ministry announced on Monday a multi-pronged action plan to combat smoking and reduce related deaths and illnesses. The plan, addressing all tobacco and electronic cigarette products, has been published and is available for public comment.

The plan comes at a time when smoking is taking an increasing toll on Israeli public health, as the use of both cigarettes and e-cigarettes (vapes) has risen in recent years, after decades of a downward trend.

The proposed program takes a variety of tacks against smoking, the most marked being a recommendation that the legal age for the purchase of all smoking products change from 18 to 21. Other recommendations relate to product content; labels and warnings; taxation; import and sales restrictions; and education and legal enforcement.

According to a report by the Taub Center for Social Policy, as of 2020, the smoking rate among the Israeli adult population aged 21 and older is 20 percent — higher than the OECD average. A quarter of men and 15% of women smoke, with rates higher among Arabs than Jews. The COVID-19 pandemic made things worse, with one-quarter of smokers adding 13 more cigarettes on average to their daily routine.

Source: The Times of Israel, 22 August 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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