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** 06 April 2020
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** UK
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** Smokers stock up on tobacco and nicotine products (#1)
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** Coronavirus: PHE urges Britons to quit cigarettes (#2)
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** International
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** Smoking cannabis can increase risk from coronavirus, Dr Stanton Glantz warns (#3)
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** Opinion: Stoners cheered when Canada legalised cannabis. How did it go so wrong? (#4)
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** South Africa: BAT pressuring government to lift cigarette sale ban (#5)
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** France: Smoker’s trek to Spain for cheaper cigarettes ends in mountain rescue (#6)
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** UK
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The respiratory pandemic sweeping the world has lit a fire under smokers, sending them rushing out to stockpile cigarettes, nicotine patches and gum to keep their cravings at bay. Sales of tobacco products in the UK rose by 9% in the third week of March compared with the same period a year earlier, according to market research group Nielsen.

The spike contrasts with a 1% fall in the 12 months to March compared with the same period a year earlier, as health-conscious smokers quit or switched to reduced-risk products such as vaping devices. Purchases of nicotine-replacement products have increased by 5% year-on-year but soared by 54% in the third week of March compared with the same period a year earlier, Nielsen said.

“If you are a smoker, you are pretty addicted to this stuff and if you are worried you won’t be able to get it then you will stockpile,” said Adam Spielman, an analyst at Citi, explaining that tobacco companies had increased shipments to retailers in the US due to “pantry loading by consumers”.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive at Action on Smoking and Health, said stockpiling had coincided with stop-smoking services receiving a growing number of calls. “Smokers are worried, understandably, about the growing evidence that smokers who get Covid-19 are more likely to get serious respiratory problems and need intensive care,” she said.

Mr Spielman said fluctuations in cigarette sales, which still make up the vast majority of revenues for tobacco groups despite their aggressive marketing of vaping and other alternative products, were not likely to affect financial performance. “Cigarette sales have been in decline for decades, but these companies have succeeded in growing profits by increasing prices,” he said. “Tobacco companies will only have a problem when they cannot keep up high prices.”

However, he questioned the notion that people will buy nicotine products at any cost pointing to financial difficulties ahead for many consumers. “As unemployment increases, we expect to see a modest acceleration of the decline in sales,” he said.

Source: Financial Times, 4 April 2020

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Smokers are more likely to develop severe coronavirus symptoms if they contract the disease, Public Health England (PHE) has said. Professor John Newton, Public Health England's director of health improvement, encouraged people to stop smoking both for their own health and to protect others.

Stressing the implications of the pandemic, Professor Newton said: "There has never been a more important time to stop smoking, not only for your own health but to protect those around you.” Since Covid-19 attacks the respiratory system, it is thought that smoking, which can damage the lungs and airways, puts people at greater risk.

Officials from PHE point to a “small but highly impactful” Chinese survey which calculates that smokers with coronavirus are 14 times more likely to suffer from severe disease. The study looked at patients suffering from Covid-19 pneumonia in three hospitals in Wuhan, China, where the virus was first identified in late December last year. A “history of smoking” was among the factors identified as contributing to the patients’ symptoms. The study, which appeared in the Chinese Medical Journal, also stated that age, respiratory failure and maximum body temperature on admission were other factors.

Professor Newton told smokers that "it is never too late to quit, no matter your age”, adding that the body continues to heal itself the longer the person remains smokefree. According to PHE, people who give up smoking should find that their breathing and blood circulation improve, enabling them to exercise more easily within 12 weeks.

Hazel Cheeseman, Director of Policy at Action on Smoking and Health, said: “Now, more than ever, smokers can help themselves, their families and their communities by quitting. There is a raft of help that smokers can still access. Stop smoking services are moving to provide telephone support, and pharmacists can provide advice on medications, but if you can’t find help locally get advice online from the Todayistheday website, and through the nightly Quit Clinic on twitter using #QuitForCovid."

Source: The Independent, 5 April 2020

See also:
Today Is The Day website – [link removed]
Chinese Medical Journal. Analysis of factors associated with disease outcomes in hospitalized patients with 2019 novel coronavirus disease. ([link removed]) February 2020.

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** International
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With coronavirus cases in the UK now at almost 30,000, fears about the spread of the virus are now widespread. Studies have previously warned that smoking can increase your risk of catching the virus, and now one expert has warned that smoking cannabis can also increase your risk.

Speaking to SF Weekly, Dr Stanton Glantz from the UCSF Centre for Tobacco Control Research and Education, said: “If you look at cannabis smoke and compare it to tobacco smoke, it’s not that different.”

Unfortunately, there are yet to be any specific studies to assess the impact of smoking cannabis on coronavirus risk. Dr Glantz added: “The amount of research we have around cannabis is very limited. And I think that’s a huge problem.”

Dr Glantz’s warning comes shortly after the Chief Medical Officer for England warned that smokers are more at risk from coronavirus.
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Freelance journalist Mike Power has written a piece reflecting on what has happened since legalisation of cannabis in Canada:

"For the three decades I have campaigned to reform drug laws, I never expected to see change happen so quickly, or at such scale, as it did in Canada. But, two years on, the Canadian experiment hasn’t quite turned out as we reformers had hoped.

"The black market is still vibrant while cannabis stocks have crashed, medical patients say they can’t get hold of essential medicines, and thousands of jobs have been lost. So, what went wrong – and what went right? Were cannabis activists’ hopes of a regulated cannabis market just a pipe dream?

"How best to create a legal cannabis industry is a question with a particular urgency in the UK today as we build a market for medicinal use – albeit agonisingly slowly. I strongly believe that cannabis will be legalised for adult use in the UK within five years. And it all goes back to that Gatineau greenhouse I visited in 2017.

"On that trip, I was accompanied by two Conservative party insiders, Blair Gibbs, ex-adviser on police matters to Boris Johnson when he was mayor, and Danny Kruger, son of TV chef Prue Leith, who wrote the “hug a hoodie” speech for David Cameron. Both men experienced something of a Damascene conversion in their views on cannabis law during that trip. Days after his return, Kruger wrote in the Spectator: “We do not need to ban everything bad. After all, the Victorians never prohibited alcohol. They regulated it, taxed it and hedged it about with a culture of disapproval. Instead of the prohibition of cannabis we need an old Victorian virtue: temperance.”
Blair Gibbs moved to Canada in 2017 to work as a cannabis consultant, but in August 2019 he took a job in the PM’s office. Both men are now at the very heart of the British government: in 2019 Kruger was parachuted into the safe Tory seat of Devizes to stand as MP in the last election and is also an adviser to Johnson.

"Whether their weed-friendly outlook survives the cold glare of Whitehall orthodoxy remains to be seen. But it is undeniable that the economic libertarians of the Tory party in 2020 are much more pro-cannabis than their newly nationalising Labour party counterparts. There are, after all, many billions of pounds to be made by the kind of people who fund the Tories: land and property owners and the banks that will finance the new industry.

"What happens if you just legalise this drug? It’s a question no one other than Canada has ever really asked. My view is that we have long known that all drug laws are unworkable, illogical, unjustifiable, unscientific, counterproductive and generate countless unintended consequences – in fact, drugs laws often create the exact opposite outcomes to those desired. But ironically, and with a beautifully stoned logic, it turns out that legalising cannabis in Canada has generated just as many challenges as it solved.

"What Canada’s experience demonstrates is that cannabis legalisation does not instantly deliver some great social panacea. There is no promised land. But we should never lose sight of this essential truth: Canadians can no longer be jailed for growing and eating and smoking certain flowers. That is a huge, fundamental step forward, no matter what the stock market indices say."

Source: The Observer, 5 April 2020

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The South African arm of British American Tobacco urged the government on Saturday to reconsider its ban on cigarette sales during the nationwide coronavirus lockdown, saying it would have unintended consequences. South African officials have imposed some of the toughest anti-coronavirus measures on the continent, including a 21-day “stay at home” lockdown that started last week Friday.

During the lockdown, essential services retailers and petrol station forecourt stores are not allowed to sell alcohol or cigarettes. The government has justified the ban on studies showing that smoking can make people more susceptible to serious complications from a coronavirus infection.
British American Tobacco South Africa (BATSA) claimed that the ban on cigarette sales could jeopardise the fight to contain the virus.

“It will unintentionally force 11 million smokers to go outside of their neighbourhood in search of outlets willing to defy the ban, as we’ve seen in some media reports,” it said in a statement. “This would lead to greater movement of people and more interactions than if smokers were able to buy cigarettes at their nearest legal outlet at the same time as buying all their other essential goods.”

BATSA is the leading tobacco manufacturer in South Africa with 78% market share of the legal cigarette market. It sells cigarettes through 50,000 outlets including grocery stores, liquor shops, spazas, informal traders and fuel stations.

Source: Reuters, 4 April 2020

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A Frenchman caused a major alert this weekend after setting off across the Pyrénées to buy cheap cigarettes in Spain. The unnamed man had first left his home in Perpignan in southern France intending to drive to La Jonquera across the border, but was stopped by police at a checkpoint and turned back.

Instead, he decided to walk across the mountains that separate the two countries, only to fall into a stream, then into some brambles before getting lost and deciding to call the emergency services. Mountain rescue teams sent up a helicopter and he was found “exhausted, shivering with cold and lost” above the border village of Le Perthus, according to rescuers.

On their Facebook page, gendarmes in the Pyrénées-Orientales region said the “unfortunate” smoker was found quickly after phoning for help.

“The young man left Perpignan by car but was turned back at the border posts between France and Spain as he tried to get to La Jonquera. So he decided to take a path used by walkers, hoping to cross the border in the mountains,” they added. After he was rescued, the man was given a €135 (£118) fine for breaking France’s coronavirus lockdown rules.

“Once again, we remind you: STAY AT HOME,” the gendarmes posted.

Before the lockdown, many residents of southern France would cross the border into Spain to buy cigarettes, alcohol and vehicle fuel, which are cheaper there.

Source: The Guardian, 6 April 2020

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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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