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Calls for a big increase in UK spending on preventative policies
Government spending on preventative policies from vaccines to family hubs should be significantly increased and the Treasury should create an accounting category to monitor it, according to a report by the thinktank Demos.
Demos is calling on the Treasury to publish how much each Whitehall department spends annually on preventative measures – citing examples such as the government’s family hubs, where parents can access help and advice, and anti-smoking or anti-obesity programmes.
That would mean creating a category of spending, supplementing the existing approach, which splits Whitehall budgets into long-term “capital” spending and day-to-day – or “resource” – spending. The existing approach was introduced by Gordon Brown as chancellor.
With preventative spending reported separately, Demos argues politicians could then pledge to increase it over the course of a parliament and beyond – with the aim of overriding the short-term thinking that frequently results in programmes like these being cut back.
The report said: “Spending on prevention is often the first to go when the UK faces challenging fiscal conditions.”
The chief executive of Demos, Polly Curtis, said: “We are proposing a completely new way of prioritising preventative spending at the heart of the Treasury. The aim is to invest longer term to prevent problems before they arise rather than spending huge amounts of public money trying to fix things when it’s too late.”
Source: The Guardian, 2 October 2023
See also: Demos report - Revenue, capital, prevention: A new public spending framework for the future
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Disposable vapes ban ‘will hamper efforts to cut cigarette smoking’
Efforts to cut cigarette smoking will be hampered by a ban on disposal vapes that is expected to be announced imminently, the Government has been warned.
The vaping industry is braced for an announcement at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester that single-use vapes will be outlawed as part of a drive to stop children from becoming addicted to the devices.
Single-use vapes have also been criticised for damaging the environment when they are thrown away, but the industry and some public health experts have warned that an outright ban on disposable vapes could be counterproductive to smoking cessation efforts.
According to a poll of 6,000 UK adults carried out by Opinium and commissioned by the Independent British Vape Trade Association (IBVTA) in August, 46 per cent of current smokers and 37 per cent of ex-smokers have tried or used a vaping device to help them quit smoking. Of those who had used a vaping device to help them quit, 51 per cent said they had used a disposable device.
Sharon Cox, the principal research fellow in the behavioural science, tobacco and alcohol research group at UCL, said she was concerned about a ban.
“E-cigarettes are almost twice as effective as traditional nicotine replacement therapies in equipping people to quit smoking and to stay quit for up to a year,” she said, adding that while there was not currently an evidence base showing that single-use vapes specifically helped people to quit, “if they’re banned, we won’t ever know”.
“Nobody’s ever said they’re risk free,” she said. “But if you’re a smoker, one of the best things that you can do is to switch to an e-cigarette. And if you’re a never-smoker, don’t start.”
She said she was concerned that a ban would add to a growing and incorrect public perception that vaping is as dangerous as smoking cigarettes, adding: “If we start to ban a category of product, will that feed into people’s misperceptions and paranoia?”
At the same time, she said the public was too complacent about the scale of smoking in society. “Smoking isn’t solved,” she said. “We’ve still got around 13 per of the UK population smoking. That’s a lot of hospitalisations, a lot of deaths.”
While she agreed with the need to restrict access to vapes to young people, she said this could be achieved through interventions such as increasing the tax on devices and banning disposable products from being sold in “garish, bright colours” or placed in “eyesight of children”.
Source: The Telegraph, 30 September 2023
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‘I’ve picked up 1.2m cigarette butts!’: five litter loathers who refuse to let it lie
In a converted shipping container in Woodbridge, Suffolk, Jason Alexander has amassed more than 400 pieces of litter. Collected during thousands of litter picks, his items include crisp packets, drink cans, surgical sutures and washing-up bottles, dating from 1920 to 1999. It all forms part of his Vintage Litter Museum, a pop-up aiming to highlight the longevity of our waste.
He set up a website, Rubbish Walks, to document his increasingly frequent litter picks and soon built a following keen to take part in community cleanups.
While it is satisfying to clear up an area, sometimes it can feel as if the problem is insurmountable. “I’ve picked up 1.2m cigarette butts to date – I’ve counted them all,” he says. “It can feel like we’re not making a dent but can you imagine the state the country would be in if there weren’t people like us cleaning up regularly?”
It is future generations that ultimately hold the key to meaningful change, says Alexander. And he hopes his Vintage Litter Museum will become a touring exhibit to take to schools and colleges around the country. “We need to educate young people to understand that things like disposable vapes don’t just disappear, they will be here for centuries to come,” he says. “Once they see it, they won’t be litter-blind, either.”
Source: The Guardian, 2 October 2023
See also: ASH - Tobacco and the Environment
Material Focus - One million single use vapes thrown away every week contributing to the growing e-waste challenge in the UK
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Australia: Opinion - The parallels between tobacco and gambling are striking, so why are we ignoring the lessons of the past?
Writing in The Guardian, Samantha Thomas, professor of public health at the Institute for Health Transformation at Deakin University, discusses the parallels between the tobacco and gambling industry.
Thomas first looks back at the ban on tobacco sponsorship in sport in 1995 and although there were claims that this would be “catastrophic” for sport due to the lack of investment, they flourished nonetheless. In addition, Thomas points out that the lack of advertising of tobacco has been credited “with playing a powerful role in limiting the uptake of smoking in young people.”
Thomas then draws a parallel between historical tobacco advertising in sport and the current uptake of gambling advertising, citing both as “harmful” industries. She goes on to discuss the interference in proposed government regulation and the vested interests “including major sporting codes and broadcasters” who “have lobbied against regulatory reform”.
Thomas highlights how gambling, unlike smoking, is not seen as a public health issue and therefore a difficult industry to regulate as it is seen as an entertainment product rather than a harmful practice, “despite clear evidence about the impacts on children and young people”. She cites the recent Australian federal inquiry into online gambling, which recommended excessive changes to gambling regulation, which included bans on advertising to protect children.
She goes on to discuss the research that Deakin University has conducted looking into the gambling attitudes and opinions of children, young people and parents. They have found that young people, due to various marketing tactics, see gambling as having “limited risks”. They found that young people and parents recognize the best way to reduce harm and de-normalise gambling is to “implement strong government regulations on advertising to prevent exposure to gambling marketing.”
Source: The Guardian, 2 September 2023
See also: Government report: Gambling in Australia
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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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