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Gang behind 'UK's largest' illegal tobacco factory jailed
A gang that ran what could be the UK's largest illegal tobacco factory in a £10m fraud scam have been jailed. The factory, in County Durham, could produce 140 packs of cigarettes a minute, according to customs officers.
The operation was run by three men from across the North East and Yorkshire and the Humber. They and seven other members of the group were jailed at Sheffield Crown Court for excise fraud. HMRC said the group ran a highly sophisticated and well organised illegal operation and the factory was the largest it had ever found. More than 24 tonnes of tobacco and 500,000 cigarettes were found along with the machinery to make cigarettes.
One of the operation leaders at the time earned less than £15,000 a year, as a director of Doncaster Greyhound Stadium, but had spent £180,000 on cars and a holiday for 18 people. When the man was arrested at his home officers found a bag containing £46,500 in cash.
Source: BBC, 26 February 2020
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On the BBC's Inside Health show, Chris van Tulleken examines cigarette filters - the tobacco industry's hidden marketing tool. He talks to historian Robert Proctor, author of The Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition and May van Schalkwyk explains why she wrote her paper 'No More Butts'.
Source: BBC Sounds, 25 February 2020
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Briefing members of the city council’s Health and Wellbeing Board at their meeting this week, Dr Liz Robin, Director of Public Health, said: “Despite all our efforts to improve public health in our area there are still some people dying far younger than they otherwise should. Levels of heart disease and obesity among our citizens are up on last year and smoking especially among young people has shown an alarming increase."
Dr Robin added: "Perhaps most worrying is that Peterborough – which already has a higher than average level of teenage pregnancy – now has a higher than average rate of smoking during pregnancy leading to one year in six of life lost due to smoking and premature death."
The first update in four years of the government’s Index of Deprivation (IoD2019), which reviews the social, economic and environmental circumstances of communities all over England, shows that some citizens in Peterborough are dying as much as three years earlier than they otherwise might.
Source: Peterborough Telegraph, 27 February 2020
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Dispatches, in a joint investigation with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has examined PMI’s attempts to promote so called ‘reduced risk’ products in the UK, whilst it ships hundreds of billions of cigarettes across the world.
Dispatches and The Guardian newspaper have seen internal Philip Morris International (PMI) documents from 2018 which show it putting into practice plans to influence public health policy in the UK. These documents reveal plans to propose a £1 billion 'Tobacco Transition Fund' financed by tobacco companies. Tobacco companies would have a role in developing the policy and oversight of how the fund is spent which would allow them to protect their market interests, which goes against obligations set out in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control under Article 5.3, which the UK is a signatory to.
To show your support for the Government's ambition of a smokefree England by 2030 and for making the tobacco industry pay for the measures needed to get us there, endorse the Roadmap to a Smokefree 2030 here.
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On Tuesday 25th February, Cancer Research UK published a new report: Smoking prevalence projections for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, based on data to 2018/19. The report estimates whether ambitions set out by the UK and Scottish Governments to achieve 5% average adult smoking prevalence by 2030 in England and by 2034 in Scotland are likely to be achieved, based on current trends.
The report finds that, based on current smoking prevalence trends, England will not achieve its smokefree ambition until 2037 and that if the 2030 ambition was to be met, the pace of change would need to be around 40% faster than predicted. On current trends in England, only the least deprived quintile in England will achieve 5% adult smoking prevalence by 2030, while the most deprived quintile will not do so until the mid-2040s.
On current trends in Scotland, the 2034 smokefree ambition will not be reached until after 2050, with smoking prevalence in 2034 set to be around 12%.
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On Tuesday 25th February, 10 years on from the landmark study Fair Society, Healthy Lives, a new report on health inequalities was published by the Institute of Health Equity and commissioned by the Health Foundation.
The report, authored by Professor Sir Michael Marmot, Jessica Allen, Tammy Boyce, Peter Goldblatt and Joana Morrison, finds that:
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people can expect to spend more of their lives in poor health
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improvements to life expectancy have stalled, and declined for the poorest 10% of women
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the health gap has grown between wealthy and deprived areas
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people living in a deprived area of the North East can expect their life expectancy to be nearly 5 years lower than people living in a similarly deprived part of London
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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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