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** 25 August 2023
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** UK
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** ‘Inaccurate reporting’ on vaping a cause for concern, Barnet Council says (#2)
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** Opinion: To drive down rates of disease, we need to look beyond the NHS (#1)
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** International
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** Japan: Researchers call on governments to raise legal smoking age to 22 (#4)
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** Link of the week
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** Podcast: (#5) The Studies Show: Vaping, smoking and popcorn lung (#5)
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** UK
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** ‘Inaccurate reporting’ on vaping a cause for concern, Barnet Council says

Barnet Council has supported the recent statements released by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and London Tobacco Alliance, who are tackling misinformation about vaping by calling for responsible media coverage and sharing clinically proven and accurate information.

In a statement on Monday, Dr Tamara Djuretic, joint director of public health and prevention, Barnet Council and The Royal Free London Group, and Cllr Alison Moore, chair of the Health & Wellbeing Board at Barnet Council, said:

“We support the use of nicotine vapes that meet UK regulatory standards as an aid for adults to stop smoking.

“For a smoker, smoking tobacco is clinically proven to be far more harmful than switching to vaping. The inaccurate reporting about adult vaping in the media is a cause for concern as it is likely turning smokers away from an aid to quitting that works, and so will substantially improve their health outcomes in the long term.

“We recognise that vaping is not risk-free, so if you don’t smoke already, we urge you not to vape."

The statement noted that more than a quarter of adult smokers have never tried vaping to help them quit smoking, even though it is one of the most effective quitting aids and termed the negative and inaccurate media attention around adult vaping as a likely reason for this.

Source: Asian Trader, 24 August 2023

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** See also: ASH mythbuster ([link removed]) on vaping misconceptions and ASH vaping press release: Four in ten smokers wrongly believe that vaping is as or more harmful as smoking ([link removed])
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Read Here ([link removed])


** Opinion: To drive down rates of disease, we need to look beyond the NHS

Writing in The New Stateman, David Buck, senior fellow at the Kings Fund, writes about the Major Conditions Strategy and the need to address economic inequalities in order to achieve a healthier society.

Buck discusses the UK’s declining health, citing the Health Foundation, who have “projected that 2.5 million more people in England will be living with major illness by 2040 than in 2019”. He says the Major Conditions Strategy, which is the government’s “initial thinking on it’s approach to tackling the growing burden of ill health”, is correct that there needs to be more emphasis on prevention and delaying the development of major conditions. Conditions such as “cancers, cardiovascular disease (including stroke and diabetes), musculoskeletal disorders (such as arthritis), mental ill health, dementia and chronic respiratory disease.”

Buck says that the NHS need to treat people in a more holistic way as many people have multiple conditions at the same time and so cannot be treated in silos by condition. He states that the Major Conditions Strategy accepts that there needs to be a change in how the population lives their lives in order to truly prevent these conditions, such as addressing issues like “air quality, food, physical activity, tobacco, housing and job quality”. And in doing this there needs to be a focus on those in the most deprived areas as they are the worst affected.

Buck argues that there is a lack of resources flowing to local areas that could educate and recommend improvements to people’s quality of life. He says the “Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that funding allocations for some key services are not as aligned with deprivation and need as they should be”.

Buck finishes by posing questions to the government, asking if they will be brave enough to implement prevention policies that they have promoted. He asks if the Government will be “bold enough to implement in full its own independent review of smoking and progressively increase the legal smoking age, or perhaps follow Scotland by setting a minimum unit price of alcohol? We will find out early next year.”

Source: The New Statesman, 24 August 2023

See also: The Institute for Fiscal Studies report: How much public spending does each area receive? Local authority level estimates of health, police, school and local government spending ([link removed])
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Read Here ([link removed])


** International
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** Japan: Researchers call on governments to raise legal smoking age to 22

Young people should be banned from buying tobacco products until they are 22, researchers have suggested after a study found those who start smoking before the age of 20 find it more difficult to quit.

Scientists said a rise in the minimum age by governments across the world could reduce nicotine dependence.

A team from Japan looked at 1,382 smokers who had visited a smoking cessation clinic in Kyoto.
Patients were split into two groups based on the age they started smoking – less than 20 years old or 20 years and older.

They all completed the Fagerstrom test for nicotine dependence (FTND), a standard tool to assess a the intensity of a person’s physical addiction to nicotine.

Those who took up the habit before 20 reported smoking 25 cigarettes per day compared to 22 per day in the late-starter group.

Those who started earlier also had higher respiratory carbon monoxide levels in the breath.

Of the early starters, 46% had successfully quit smoking, compared to 56% of those who started smoking at aged 20 or over.

Author Dr Koji Hasegawa, of the National Hospital Organisation Kyoto Medical Centre, said: “Our results show that starting smoking early is linked with higher nicotine dependency, even in young adulthood.

“The study indicates that increasing the legal age to buy tobacco to 22 years or older could lead to a reduction in the number of people addicted to nicotine and at risk of adverse health consequences.”

In the UK, you must be over 18 to buy cigarettes. The minimum age was increased from 16 in 2007.

A report called ‘The Khan Review: making smoking obsolete’ was published in June 2022 and includes a suggestion to raise the legal age of smoking.

Source: Daily Mail, 25 August 2023

See also: The Khan Review: making smoking obsolete ([link removed]) and the original study: Effect of smoking initiation age on nicotine dependence ([link removed])
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Read Here ([link removed])


** Link of the week
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** Podcast: The Studies Show: Vaping, smoking and popcorn lung

In Episode 5 of The Studies Show, journalists Tom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie discuss the history of smoking and its regulation and look into the research on the health effects of vaping and whether the two are comparable.

They try to answer the questions - Are e-cigarettes “95% less harmful” than cigarettes, or aren’t they? Are vapes gateway drugs that lead people to smoke, or are they a great way to give up smoking? Is it both? Neither? As well as explaining the origin of the fabled “popcorn lung”.
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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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