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** 9 October 2023
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** UK
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** Wes Streeting threatens to ‘come down like ton of bricks’ on vaping industry (#1)
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** Smoking ban opens door to tax on unhealthy food, says Tory ex-minister (#2)
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** Comment: BORIS JOHNSON: Rishi's smoking ban is barmy (#3)
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** Rishi Sunak’s health kick gives Big Tobacco a headache (#4)
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** UK
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** Wes Streeting threatens to ‘come down like ton of bricks’ on vaping industry

Labour will “come down like a ton of bricks” on the vaping industry if Rishi Sunak does not “pull his finger out” and introduce regulations, Wes Streeting has said.

The shadow health secretary attacked the prime minister, saying he had been leading a government that had been “asleep at the wheel” as a generation of children become addicted to nicotine.

Interviewed by the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, at the Labour party’s annual conference in Liverpool, Streeting shared stories from teachers concerned about pupils who were battling withdrawal symptoms in lessons.

“The vaping industry, which presented itself as the angel of stop smoking services with this lovely new gadget that you can breathe in that’s much less harmful, they thought they were doing us a favour. And to an extent they were until they started marketing their vapes in brightly coloured packaging … and in doing so they addicted a generation of children to nicotine.’’

In a warning to the industry, Streeting said: “[Labour] will ban the marketing, promotion and the sale of vapes to children and if this government doesn’t pull its finger out and get on with it ahead of the general election we will come down on the vaping industry like a tonne of bricks.”

Streeting also said plans by Rishi Sunak to stop the next generation smoking were announced without crediting the New Zealand Labour party, which first implemented the policy.

Source: The Guardian, 8 October 2023

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** Smoking ban opens door to tax on unhealthy food, says Tory ex-minister

Moves to ban smoking open the door to similar measures to tackle obesity, a former health minister has suggested.

Lord Bethell said that a tax on unhealthy foods should be next on the list, along with measures to stop junk food outlets opening near schools.

The Tory peer, who was a minister under Matt Hancock, welcomed Rishi Sunak’s plans to keep increasing the age that cigarettes can be legally purchased.

He said that the Government should make it “the first step of several” to overhaul lifestyles in Britain.

Lord Bethell said that there had been “a pull back” from efforts to tackle obesity, which was a matter of “regret” to him.

A government-commissioned food strategy in 2021 called for an expansion of sugar taxes, to cover foods as well as drinks, and the introduction of a salt tax, but the measures were never implemented.

Other measures promised under the Boris Johnson administration – including a proposed ban on adverts for such products online and before 9pm on television, and a ban on buy-one-get-one-free deals – have been pushed back.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: I do think this should be the first step of several. Maybe this should be a step towards looking at obesity as well.”

On Thursday, Lord Bethell said: “I’d like to see two things. One is I’d like to see local communities given much more say in where junk food outlets are located and if they feel they shouldn’t be near schools they should have those powers.

“Secondly we should be looking at a levy on ultra-processed foods of the kind that we did on sugary drinks,” said the former minister.

He said that the sugar tax on drinks, introduced in 2018, had proved “enormously successful” in hugely reducing the sugar content of drinks, and should now be applied to other products.

A source close to Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, said: “There is no change in our approach to prevention. With obesity, our focus is on the pilot schemes with the rollout of weight loss drugs; these have the potential to be transformational in tackling obesity. Steve’s approach is about informed choice and support, calories on menus and so forth, for adults while doing everything we can to protect children from potential harms.

“We are not looking at bans on buy-one-get-one-free deals or meal deals that come with a bag of crisps and the like. Smoking is a very different matter, as the Prime Minister made clear in his conference speech – there is no healthy level of smoking, obesity is much more complex.”

Source: The Telegraph, 5 October 2023
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** Comment: BORIS JOHNSON: Rishi's smoking ban is barmy

Writing in the Daily Mail, Boris Johnson criticises the Rishi’s proposal of a New Zealand style smoking ban.

He said ‘’are [we] seriously proposing to ask our police to divert their time and resources away from all the other priorities — knife crime, ¬sexual violence, county lines drugs gangs — and to focus on the legal enforcement of a nationwide ban on smoking.’’

‘’What punishments will we impose? Fines? What if you refuse to pay?’’

''Yes, folks, if this plan is to make any sense at all, it must logically mean that we are willing to send repeated and incorrigible scofflaws* to prison — for smoking!''

However, Johnson did admit to the harms of smoking saying '’of course smoking is bad for your health and it is a good thing that it is gradually dying out.’’

‘’The number of adult smokers has fallen dramatically in the last 40 years — from about 45 per cent of those over 18 in the 1970s, to less than 15 per cent today.’’

He noted that ''across the country more and more people, especially young people, are making that same choice. They are exercising their personal responsibility.''

For Johnson this approach is the ‘’the right way’’ to deal with smoking, rather than imposing a ban that will be ‘’either unenforceable or so painful in its enforcement as to distract the police from other vital tasks.’’

Source: Daily Mail, 6 October 2023

Editorial Comment:

This comment piece misrepresents the proposed legislation.
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1.
** The legislation does not prohibit smoking, only the sale of tobacco, smokers will not be subject to fines or prison,
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2.
** Laws on age of sale for products are enforced by trading standards not the police,
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3.
** The argument that the law will be unenforceable was used to argue against a ban on smoking in enclosed public places. In fact, there was 97% compliance from day one, because it had overwhelming public support. Seven out of ten people supported the smoking ban when it was implemented, the same proportion as already support the Prime Minister’s proposals for raising the age of sale, you can see data on this here:
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** Rishi Sunak’s health kick gives Big Tobacco a headache

The prime minister, the son of a GP and a pharmacist, proposed the “biggest single intervention in public health in a generation”, with a plan to increase the legal age to buy cigarettes by “one year, every year” and thus eventually to ban them in England.

While tobacco companies’ share prices fell and those companies and lobby groups denounced the move, public health leaders rejoiced at the proposed smoking crackdown, which is similar to a ban already introduced in New Zealand. Deborah Arnott, the chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, the campaign charity, called it an “unprecedented set of measures to hasten the day when smoking is obsolete”.

However, alongside a consultation on restricting disposable vapes, it also has deepened an existential crisis facing the tobacco industry.

To varying degrees, the world’s Big Four listed multinational tobacco companies have been investing in developing alternatives to cigarettes, launching vapes and heat-not-burn devices at the same time as raising prices on traditional combustible products and expanding in emerging markets to offset the long-term decline in smoking in wealthy countries.

But with governments growing increasingly concerned about the appeal of next-generation, nicotine-containing vaping products to young people and with controversial moves by tobacco companies into the pharmaceuticals and cannabis markets faltering, the industry’s future has become even more clouded.

Shares in Imperial fell by more than 9 per cent between media reports first circulating on September 22 that Sunak was considering a New Zealand-style ban and after the prime minister’s speech on Wednesday.

Shane MacGuill, head of nicotine research at Euromonitor, the market research group, said: “This is the first generational cigarette ban proposed by a major western market and as such represents an existential point of no return for the tobacco industry in the UK and, in time, globally.”

Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, said ‘’this move highlights the importance of a multicategory approach to tobacco, with investors increasingly favouring companies that can successfully capture transitioning smokers,”

Analysts expect the government’s proposed ban to prompt an industry that has already invested in food, beer, financial services, retailing and perfume to accelerate its diversification.

Philip Morris, the world’s biggest quoted tobacco company, has been the most radical in responding to growing international health concerns. Two years ago, during the American group’s contentious £1 billion acquisition of Vectura, a Chippenham-based respiratory drugs company.

However, the company’s move into healthcare and wellness, via the Vectura takeover, has faltered. It was hit by a $680 million impairment charge in that business in July and no longer expects to reach more than $1 billion of net revenues by 2025, a key target at the time of the Vectura deal.

Imperial said that while “we understand the government’s desire for new tobacco control measures, because of the health risks associated with smoking . . . like any prohibition, the proposal to ban the legal sale of cigarettes over time threatens significant unintended consequences”.

BAT said that “enforcement of existing tobacco control policies is already under-resourced. An additional ban is only going to make it more difficult to police.”

Source: The Times, 9 October 2023

Editorial note: Claiming that tobacco regulations will increase an illicit market, and cause issues enforcing such measures have been used by Big Tobacco several times against many tobacco control measures. Such claims were made against increasing the price of tobacco through taxation and the ban on smoking in indoor venues, in both cases there were no notable issues with enforcement and the illicit market. See Tobacco Tactics ([link removed]) for more information on tactics used by the industry.

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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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