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** 30 November 2023
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** UK
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** Elfbar: Top vape firm drops sweet flavours over appeal to kids (#1)
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** Elf Bar vape adverts banned in UK over ‘greener’ recycling claims (#2)
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** Opinion: Could down under about-turn on tobacco happen here? (#3)
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** Tory MP who chided gambling regulator received £8,000 from betting industry (#4)
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** UK
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** Elfbar: Top vape firm drops sweet flavours over appeal to kids

The UK's leading vape brand Elfbar and its sister brand Lost Mary say they will drop dessert and soft drink flavours, which have been criticised for appealing to children.

Elfbar called for a new licencing regime similar to ones for cigarettes and alcohol.

Elfbar and Lost Mary make up more than half of the UK's disposable vape sales, according to data firm NielsenIQ.

The government consultation on new rules for vapes closes on 6 December.

The dazzling range of flavours have helped to turn disposable vapes into a market worth billions of pounds in a few short years, with Elfbar and Lost Mary taking the lion's share. They're both owned by the Chinese firm Shenzhen iMiracle Technology.

Elfbar has already dropped Bubble Gum, Cotton Candy, and Rainbow Candy flavours, with more expected to follow. Gummy Bear has been renamed Gummy, but even that will soon be dropped.

The company also called for tighter restrictions on vape sales, including a licencing regime for retailers, and rules requiring them to display vapes behind the counter.

Elfbar argues against the introduction of a new tax on vapes similar to that charged on tobacco. It argued that a new tax would encourage former smokers to switch to illegal vapes, or return to cigarettes.

Hazel Cheeseman, deputy chief executive of the anti-smoking charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) said: "It is no surprise that Elf Bar have failed to strike this balance in their recommendations with a series of half measures that will fail to adequately protect children".

She added that an extra tax on vapes "is particularly important to addressing the illicit market, something they say they care about, as it will enable far greater control of products at the border."

Source: BBC, 30 November 2023

See also: ASH – Response to youth vaping call for evidence ([link removed])
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** Elf Bar vape adverts banned in UK over ‘greener’ recycling claims

Adverts for the vaping company Elf Bar have been banned after using the slogan “recycling for a greener future” over concern they were misleading because of the environmental damage of discarded vapes.

A study by Material Focus shows that 260m disposable vapes were thrown away in the UK in 2022, making them a leading cause of the rise in plastic pollution in recent years.

The advert, which was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), gave the impression that recycling vapes was easy and could be done at home. Vaping products cannot generally be home recycled, but rather have to be taken to special facilities such as council-run waste centres.

The ads appeared on buses and digital billboards in London in July and August. They carried images of the Elf Bar 600 V2 vape alongside the words “recycling for a greener future” and “green awareness”. Both were the subject of complaints to the regulator by Adfree Cities and others.

James Ward, a campaigner at Adfree Cities, called for a total ban on advertising nicotine vapes. “Just as cigarettes scar the bodies of smokers, so has the rise in popularity of disposable vapes left a toxic legacy of plastic and harmful battery metals on our environment,” he said.

“Advertising for nicotine-containing vapes is prohibited on TV, radio, in print and online. That it is permitted on outdoor advertising is a glaring loophole in the law and highlights how outdoor advertising sadly so often provides a willing platform for polluting companies.

“That’s why we’re calling for a universal ban on vape advertising, a measure that will close the existing loophole.”

Source: The Guardian, 29 November 2023
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** Opinion: Could down under about-turn on tobacco happen here?

Writing in the Grocer, the magazine’s technology editor George Nott, discusses the decision made by the new coalition government in New Zealand to drop legislation to introduce a progressive smoking ban by raising the age of sale each year. Nott looks at whether this could happen in the UK where a similar piece of legislation was recently proposed by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Nott refers to an article from the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) – “which BAT has donated to for decades” – who celebrated the reversal in New Zealand, saying that it would have resulted in billions of pounds going to criminal gangs and pointed to alcohol prohibition in the US as evidence. Nott argues that the two are not comparable, with demand for cigarettes in the UK in “terminal” decline whereas demand for alcohol is not. Nott states: “Yes, any ban would lead to the odd situation where a 28-year-old can purchase tobacco while a 27-year-old can’t, but such legislatory foibles are hardly worth chucking out a perfectly sound policy over.” Nott also points to how uniquely harmful tobacco is, with 76,000 tobacco related deaths in the UK every year and many more living with preventable illness.

Nott also attributes the decision in New Zealand to drop the policy to “pure politics”. Dropping the legislation was a precondition for the centre-right National Party to form a coalition with the “populist New Zealand First and the rightwing ACT party”. Nott sums up the decision by stating: “The longer-term savings, the potential for thousands of lives to be saved: all abandoned in pursuit of power.”

Nott concludes by asking whether Rishi Sunak will stick to the policy in the face of opposition from “spurned thinktanks and [from] within his own party”.

Source: The Grocer, 29 November 2023

See also: ASH - Frequently asked questions: Creating a smokefree generation ([link removed]) | Tobacco Tactics – Institute of Economic Affairs ([link removed])
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** Tory MP who chided gambling regulator received £8,000 from betting industry

A Tory MP who accused the gambling regulator of being too “heavy handed” has received more than £8,000 in hospitality and payments from the betting industry this year, including tickets to see Madonna.

Craig Whittaker, the MP for Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, criticised the Gambling Commission in an article for the Conservative Home website last week.

The article was published five weeks after Whittaker attended a Madonna concert courtesy of the industry’s lobby group, the Betting & Gaming Council (BGC).

Whittaker hit out at the regulator over its continuing consultation on introducing “affordability checks” for gamblers, a measure that campaigners say will prevent unsustainable losses, but which critics say are too intrusive and will drive punters to the hidden market, as well as depriving horse racing of revenues.

The BGC has previously railed against affordability checks. A spokesperson said it had had nothing to do with Whittaker’s article.

The Madonna tickets, worth £2,148, take the amount of hospitality and payments that Whittaker has received from the gambling industry so far this year to £8,278, the parliamentary register of members’ interests shows.

The gambling industry has increased its spending on hospitality and benefits for parliamentarians tenfold in recent years, amid a prolonged review that resulted earlier this year in government proposals to reform regulations governing the £10bn-a-year sector.

MPs’ receipt of gifts from the industry drew criticism from Liz Ritchie, who co-founded Gambling with Lives, a charity that supports families bereaved by gambling-related suicide, after her son Jack took his own life after becoming addicted to gambling.

“MPs who take thousands of pounds of gambling industry hospitality only to then go and publicly lobby against life-saving reforms need to meet with the families who’ve lost loved ones to gambling,” she said.

“You’d hope they’d see that the industry profits they are trying to protect mean little compared with the thousands of lives ruined every year.”

Source: The Guardian, 29 November 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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