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Improvement in cancer survival rates slowing down
The rate of improvement in the number of people who survive cancer has slowed significantly, a study says.
A report by Cancer Research UK says the rate of progress was five times faster in the 2000s than in the 2010s.
It says lack of sufficient funding for research is largely to blame.
However, the report also finds the likelihood of surviving a decade or more with cancer in the UK is the highest it has ever been, rising from 47.9% in 2010-11 to 49.8% in 2018.
This compares to about a quarter (24%) in the early 1970s.
Jon Shelton, head of cancer intelligence at Cancer Research UK, said: "This report shows us where the UK is doing well, and where we need to focus on improvements for patients. There are positives in here - screening is having a real impact, and cancer mortality rates are falling.
"There are many areas to improve though. Cancer survival is not improving quickly enough. People are waiting far too long for diagnosis and to start treatment, with cancer waiting time targets consistently being missed. And we need to prevent more cancers."
The report says smoking remains the biggest cause of cancer in the UK, with 150 cases in the UK every day.
Cancer Research UK says a "national cancer council" should be set up for England, bringing together the government, scientists, and charities, to create a 10-year cancer strategy.
It says that by 2040 there are projected to be 500,000 new cancer cases diagnosed each year in the UK - mainly because of a growing and ageing population.
Source: BBC News, 1 February 2024
See also: Cancer Research UK – Cancer in the UK Report
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United States: How a debate over vaping might derail the war on tobacco
Cliff Douglas fought the tobacco industry for decades. As a lawyer, activist, and executive at nonprofit organizations, he sued cigarette makers, cultivated whistleblowers, and led the campaign to ban smoking on airlines.
Which is why allies in the anti-smoking movement were surprised when in October he became CEO of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, a nonprofit created and entirely funded by Philip Morris International, one of the world’s largest tobacco companies.
Douglas, who previously worked for the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association, sees his new job as the continuation of his anti-smoking work. He joined the foundation only after its board agreed to make a clean break from Philip Morris.
Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, killing about 480,000 people a year, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. To succeed, Douglas will have to work through what he calls the “very fraught, polarized environment” that hampers the nonprofits, foundations, governments, and academics who work on tobacco control. They have fractured over tobacco harm reduction — the idea that people who cannot or will not quit smoking should be provided with alternatives, notably e-cigarettes, which deliver nicotine without burning tobacco.
Bloomberg Philanthropies and the nonprofits it supports — the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and long-established groups like the American Cancer Society, the American Lung Association, and the American Heart Association — have campaigned relentlessly to limit access to e-cigarettes. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids has focused on what it continues to describe as a “youth e-cigarette epidemic,” even though vaping by teens has fallen by more than 60% since its peak in 2019. They argue that e-cigarettes will lead to a new generation addicted to nicotine, even if they are not smoking.
The argument threatens to derail progress on one of the most successful public health campaigns in history. The percentage of Americans who smoke has dropped from 42% in 1964 — when the first Surgeon General’s report warned of the dangers of smoking — to less than 12%. But the arrival of e-cigarettes fractured opponents of smoking, especially after startup company JUUL marketed its vapes with high nicotine levels to young people, infuriating activists and regulators.
Douglas says the company has no influence over the foundation. All ties with Philip Morris were severed after accepting $122.5 million, which he characterized as a severance payment.
But some anti-tobacco advocates remain sceptical. Yolonda Richardson, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, and Deborah Arnott, chief executive of a British health charity called Action on Smoking and Health, told Reuters that the foundation was tainted by accepting tobacco money and could not be seen as independent.
Source: ABC News, 1 February 2024
See also: Tobacco Tactics - Foundation for a Smoke-Free World
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Is Paris poised to make new strides in tobacco control in 2024?
When France unveiled a new tobacco control plan late last year, anti-smoking campaigners were quick to caution that despite the promising-sounding headlines—“from now on, no-smoking areas will be the norm,” proclaimed then-health minister Aurélien Rousseau about the policy—the strategy fell short in a number of ways.
At least one of the weaknesses of the original plan has already been corrected, with an unexpected tobacco price hike coming into effect in France on January 1st, with cigarettes rising by between 50 cents and 1 euro a pack. While the price increase is a step in the right direction, it’s just the first step. French tobacco control NGOs have reminded that tobacco prices will need to be significantly and persistently increased in order to quash the stubbornly-high smoking rates seen in France— and, indeed, in much of the EU. What’s more, MPs, led by Seine-et-Marne representative Frédéric Valletoux, have stressed the need to target the serious illicit trade plague which is helping keep smoking rates high.
Encouragingly, the new government of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal could provide a boon for France’s fledgling tobacco control agenda. The French PM has previously called for a bolstered anti-smuggling crusade based on increased criminal penalties, deployment of law enforcement officials and investment in high-tech scanning equipment.
The French government’s latest tobacco control move comes after 5 years of stagnation at 15 million smokers – of which 12 million are daily consumers – with France’s 22% smoking rate positioning it well above the EU average.
According to a 2023 report from the French Observatory of Drugs and Addiction Trends (OFDT), smoking caused over 73,000 deaths in 2019, while generating a “social cost” – including cancer patients’ lost qualify of life, economic value of lives lost and public healthcare spending – of more than €150 billion annually. Crucially, this new research has revealed that the French government’s smoking-related annual losses massively exceed the tax revenue generated from tobacco sales – less than one-tenth at a mere €13 billion in the year of study.
According to tobacco control NGOs, France’s illicit market is primarily being fuelled by legal cross-border purchases and smuggling – a direct consequence of the tobacco industry intentionally oversupplying small countries bordering larger markets with higher cigarette prices.
The EU’s forthcoming revision process for its tobacco control policies provides a key opportunity to develop a strong cross-border trade proposal and rein in the tobacco industry’s market manipulation. Yet Brussels will need to take meaningful action against the latter’s lobbying efforts, which have long prevented these types of measures.
Particular concerns have popped up over the tender process for the EU’s tobacco tracking system, with a large cross-party group of MEPs led by French politician Pierre Larrouturou (S&D) tabling a parliamentary question for oral answer about the “opaque” process by which Dentsu, a company with known ties to the tobacco industry as highlighted by research from the University of Bath, was selected, and whether there was improper conflict of interest in the case of Jan Hoffman, who had worked on tobacco traceability at DG SANTE before being hired by Dentsu in 2020. In late December, European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly confirmed that the Commission had largely failed to effectively tackle Big Tobacco’s shadowy influence in Brussels.
In response, the Commission has encouragingly indicated that it will launch a probe into the exposure of its public health and tobacco control policies to industry interests. Accompanying the investigation, O’Reilly has notably called for the Commission to boost transparency of meetings with industry representatives, while bolstering the process for evaluating the necessity of these meetings, in line with WHO requirements.
Source: European Views, 1 February 2024
See also: French Observatory of Drugs and Addiction Trends – The social cost of drugs: Estimate in France
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Podcast: Let’s talk e-cigarettes - Cara Murphy
Associate Professor Jamie Hartmann-Boyce and Dr Nicola Lindson discuss the new evidence in e-cigarette research and interview Assistant Professor Cara Murphy, clinical psychologist at Brown University. Cara Murphy works at the Centre for Alcohol and Addiction in the School of Public Health and the Centre for Addiction and Disease Risk Exacerbation.
Jamie Hartmann-Boyce interviews Cara Murphy about her new trial, Trial for Harm Reduction with Incentives & Vaping E-cigarettes (THRIVE) and funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. This trial will assess the effect of e-cigarettes and incentives on combustible cigarette smoking in individuals with overweight/obesity who smoke cigarettes. Cara outlines how individuals with overweight/obesity who smoke cigarettes have greatly increased risks of metabolic, cardiac, and pulmonary diseases due to the synergistic effects of tobacco and obesity. Cara also discusses issues faced by people who smoke and are overweight. Switching to e-cigarettes may decrease the risk of negative health outcomes and be a promising approach.
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