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** 18 September 2023
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** UK
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** Disposable vapes could still be available to smokers through NHS scheme despite Government ban (#1)
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** ‘Dire need’ for labels on alcohol and ads about unhealthy eating to cut avoidable cancers (#2)
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** International
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** Tobacco smuggling to Spain stokes resentment over Gibraltar (#3)
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** How China Became Addicted to Its Tobacco Monopoly (#4)
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** TikTok fined €345m for breaking EU data law on children’s accounts (#5)
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** UK
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** Disposable vapes could still be available to smokers through NHS scheme despite Government ban

Disposable vapes could still be given to smokers to help them quit cigarettes, despite the Government drawing up plans to ban them, i understands.

Ministers are understood to be finalising plans to ban single-use vapes amid concerns they have sparked an epidemic of youth vaping across Britain, with a decision set to come as early as next week.

However, health department sources suggested that disposable vapes could be still available to smokers under NHS “swap to stop” schemes, despite any potential ban.

Neil O’Brien, the Health Minister, announced in April that one in five smokers in England will be offered a free vape kit to help them quit smoking under plans to make the country “smoke-free” by 2030.

The Government’s new “swap to stop” scheme will only be available to over-18s, though the Government will also set up a “specialised flying squad” to crack down on shops selling vapes to children and sales of counterfeit tobacco products.

The latest figures from the Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) group suggest that 21 per cent of children aged 11 to 17 in the UK have tried vaping, up from 14 per cent in 2020.

It remains unclear whether a ban on disposable vapes would be postponed until after the initial “swap to stop” scheme ends in March 2025, or whether local authorities would be granted an exemption to prescribe them for current smokers.

A law change would likely be required to enforce the ban, which would only apply in England. Devolved administrations set similar policies for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Source: The i, 17 September 2023

See also: ASH - Use of e-cigarettes among young people in Great Britain ([link removed]) | ASH - Policy options to tackle the issue of disposable (singleuse) vapes ([link removed].)
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** ‘Dire need’ for labels on alcohol and ads about unhealthy eating to cut avoidable cancers

Hard-hitting TV campaigns about the dangers of unhealthy eating and labels on alcohol are needed to curb the huge rise in avoidable cancers, charities and health campaigners have warned.

The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) said mass media campaigns, using tough messages mirroring the graphic photographs and wording on cigarette packets, were now needed to tackle the widespread lack of awareness that alcohol and being overweight are both major causes of cancer.

“There is a dire need for impactful campaigns to highlight important health messages and to reduce the risk of preventable cancers,” said Dr Panagiota Mitrou, the WCRF’s director of research.

Governments have previously used public health adverts that deployed “scare tactics”, such as fat oozing out of an artery to illustrate the dangers of smoking.

About 40% of all cancers are preventable because they are caused by known risk factors, mainly smoking, alcohol, obesity and sunburn, the WCRF and Cancer Research UK (CRUK) believe.

A report last week by Frontier Economics estimated that 184,000 cases of avoidable cancer would be diagnosed in the UK this year, which would cost the country £78bn.

Alcohol has been shown to cause seven forms of cancer while strong evidence has found that overweight and obese adults – two-thirds of Britons weigh more than their healthy weight – are at heightened risk of 14 different forms of the disease, according to WCRF, which tracks global changes in the evidence base for what causes cancer.

Hazel Cheeseman, the deputy chief executive of the campaign group Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), said that while campaigns such as Stoptober were proven to help smokers quit, “the evidence says that hard-hitting health messages are what change behaviour”.

She voiced alarm that Ash’s latest annual Smokefree GB survey, of 12,000 adults who were weighted to reflect the UK population as a whole, had found barely half (55%) of 18- to 24-year-olds who smoke knew that doing so caused cancer, while even fewer were aware that it also caused strokes (46%), heart disease (50%) and lung problems (55%). That was far fewer than the very large majorities of those aged 25 or over who were aware of those links.

“Lack of health messages on TV, online, radio and billboards will be contributing to lower levels of understanding among all young smokers, but particularly young smokers who won’t recall the hard-hitting campaigns of the past,” said Cheeseman. More young adults began smoking when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and have maintained their habit since, figures suggest.

Health charities urged ministers to learn from the success of public health education campaigns run in the north-east by Fresh and Balance, which are funded by local NHS trusts and local councils. The groups, which target smoking and harmful drinking, specialise in hard-hitting mass media ads.

In Fresh’s “smoking survivors” campaign, two women who got cancer after smoking spoke of their regret at ever taking up cigarettes. Fresh believes that this and other campaigns it has run have helped to cut smoking in the north-east from 29% in 2005 to 13% – the biggest fall in any English region.

Ailsa Rutter, the director of both groups, said the use of striking and emotionally charged messages would be vital if the government was to achieve its stated ambition of making England “smoke-free” – defined as 5% or fewer of the population smoking – by 2030.

Source: The Guardian, 16 September 2023

See also: Frontier Economics - The societal and economic costs of preventable cancers in the UK ([link removed])
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** International
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** Tobacco smuggling to Spain stokes resentment over Gibraltar

Super-powered dinghies carrying contraband tobacco are crashing through hopes of better relations between Spain and the UK over the British territory of Gibraltar.

Cigarettes are cheap in Gibraltar because the British territory does not apply sales tax or other levies, enabling smuggling gangs to sell them at a mark-up in Spain after hauling them there on five-minute boat dashes.

This booming black market is an irritant in UK-Spain relations as Gibraltar remains in limbo following Brexit, with Madrid pushing for greater tobacco controls as part of any new deal over the territory’s ties with the EU.

Lisardo Capote, the Spanish customs official leading the fight against the night-time smugglers, accused Gibraltar of letting trafficking thrive, depriving Spain of tax revenue and fomenting criminality.

“Tobacco is not a problem in the colony,” he told the Financial Times, referring to Gibraltar. “It is a source of funding. The problems it creates are on this side of the fence.”

Capote, head of the customs surveillance service in the Spanish region neighbouring Gibraltar, estimates the trade in cigarettes — known as “illicit whites” — is denying his country some €400mn a year in import duties.

The Gibraltar government sets a minimum price for cigarettes, which currently stands at £2.60 (€3.03) for a pack of 20. In Spain, by contrast, where the government mandates all cigarette prices, the cheapest are €4.10 per packet.

Authorities in the British territory seized 1.6mn cigarettes and made 12 related arrests last year. Its anti-smuggling measures include rules that limit the amount of tobacco a person can purchase or possess at any one time. Spain, meanwhile, allows travellers to bring no more than 200 cigarettes across the border from Gibraltar.

Perched on the eponymous strait that connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, Gibraltar has been a smuggling hub throughout the 300-plus years that it has belonged to the UK. In a 2018 deal Gibraltar agreed to raise cigarette prices to narrow the price gap with Spain, but smuggling has continued.

Source: The Financial Times, 15 September 2023
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** How China Became Addicted to Its Tobacco Monopoly

Chongqing, a booming municipality of 32 million people, was set to join a short list of major Chinese cities that have banned indoor smoking in public. But in August 2020, Zhang Jianmin, head of the state-run monopoly China National Tobacco Corp., paid a visit to local leaders — including the mayor and the powerful head of Chongqing’s branch of the Communist Party.

When Chongqing’s new smoking law was adopted the next month, it included a significant carve-out long sought by the company: Restaurants, hotels and “entertainment venues” such as bars and karaoke clubs could allow smoking in designated areas.

It was another demonstration of strength by China National Tobacco Corp., the largest tobacco company in the world — and one more missed opportunity by China to live up to a key commitment it had made in signing a major international tobacco control treaty 20 years ago this November.

Under that treaty, the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, China pledged to enact a national indoor smoking ban, a measure that both protects people from second-hand smoke, and, researchers say, makes smoking less socially acceptable. But in China, the national law never happened, and efforts by municipalities to implement their own bans have been challenged at every turn by the tobacco monopoly, commonly known as China Tobacco.

Other important elements of the WHO treaty also have yet to manifest. China has not banned the marketing of low-tar cigarettes as safer than other products (they aren’t), and has failed to require that tobacco manufacturers disclose many of the cancer-causing toxins in their products.

China’s tobacco addiction, meanwhile, has continued unabated. Smoking rates have barely budged, even as they have plunged in many comparable countries — and as the country has undergone a remarkable economic transformation.

The result of China’s failure to curb its smoking epidemic is a growing health crisis that is projected to grow far worse in years to come as many of the country’s 300 million smokers contract lung cancer, heart disease or a host of other illnesses associated with tobacco use. China doesn’t keep precise data on tobacco deaths, but health experts agree that at least one million people a year die there of smoking-related diseases.

China is hardly the only country to struggle to reconcile the economic might of its tobacco industry with the health harms of cigarettes. In the United States, the political clout of Big Tobacco stalled reforms for decades. Several other countries in Asia and the Middle East, including Indonesia and Turkey, are faring as poorly or worse than China when it comes to fighting smoking.

Still, China’s struggles stand out. Between 2000 and 2020, the global adult tobacco use rate (which includes smokeless tobacco) fell from 34% to 23%, according to data from the World Bank. In China it declined from 27% to 26%.

Source: Pulitzer Centre, 13 September 2023

See also: Tobacco Tactics - China National Tobacco Corporation ([link removed])
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** TikTok fined €345m for breaking EU data law on children’s accounts

TikTok has been fined €345m (£296m) for breaking EU data law in its handling of children’s accounts, including failing to shield underage users’ content from public view.

The Irish data watchdog (DPC) , which regulates TikTok across the EU, said the Chinese-owned video app had committed multiple breaches of GDPR rules.

The DPC ruled that TikTok, which has a minimum user age of 13, did not properly take into account the risk posed to underage users who gained access to the platform. It said the public-setting-by-default process allowed anyone to “view social media content posted by those users”.

The DPC decision comes after TikTok was fined £12.7m in April by the UK data regulator for illegally processing the data of 1.4 million children under 13 who were using its platform without parental consent. The information commissioner said TikTok had done “very little, if anything” to check who was using the platform.

TikTok said: “We respectfully disagree with the decision, particularly the level of the fine imposed. The DPC’s criticisms are focused on features and settings that were in place three years ago, and that we made changes to well before the investigation even began, such as setting all under-16 accounts to private by default.”

Source: The Guardian, 15 September 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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