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** 25 April 2024
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** UK
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** Anti-smoking charity ASH names new CEO (#1)
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** Girls drinking, smoking and vaping more than boys in the UK (#2)
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** Figures Published showing NHS spend on local stop smoking services (#3)
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** 'Why I voted for the Tobacco and Vapes Bill' - Steve Brine (#4)
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** Vape shop owner fined £6k for selling to children (#5)
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** UK
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** Anti-smoking charity ASH names new CEO

Action on Smoking & Health has named its new chief executive ahead of the retirement of Deborah Arnott, who has led the charity for 21 years.

Hazel Cheeseman will take up the CEO role in October this year, having worked in senior roles at ASH for the past decade.

Cheeseman said it was an “incredibly exciting time to take up the helm” given the progress of the Tobacco & Vapes Bill, and the UK now “on track to be the first country in the world to phase out the sale of tobacco”.

“The question for the coming years will not be if we can become a smoke-free country but just how quickly this can be achieved,” she added.

Cheeseman – who became deputy chief executive of ASH in 2021 – has been instrumental in the development of the charity during her time there, having established the Mental Health & Smoking Partnership: a coalition of charities committed to ending the excess in premature death caused by smoking among people with mental health conditions; securing funding from NHSE to support tobacco dependency treatment services in the NHS; securing funding from Cancer Research UK to develop ASH research and programmes and producing innovative reports on how social housing providers can better support the nearly a third of tenants who smoke to quit.

“The future of ASH is in safe hands,” said Arnott. “Hazel is very well-connected and greatly respected in the health community, with all the knowledge, skills and expertise needed to lead the organisation. Having worked closely with her for over 10 years I know that she will be an excellent chief executive, and more than that will be an innovative public health leader, breaking new ground for ASH and accelerating progress towards a smoke-free future.”

Arnott announced she was to retire in February. A staunch adversary of big tobacco, she clocked up several campaign wins during her more than two decade-long tenure that have changed the way tobacco is sold in the UK, including putting tobacco products out of sight in shops and the implementation of plain, standardised packs. The ratcheting up of regulation – including the introduction of a ban on smoking in pubs and public places – has been accompanied by substantial declines in smoking prevalence, of more than half among adults.

“Under Deborah, ASH has been a force for change over the last 21 years and we owe her a debt of gratitude for the contribution she has made to the nation’s health,” said ASH chair Professor Nick Hopkinson. “Hazel will continue that work ensuring that no group is left behind as we move towards being a country where smoking is obsolete.”

Source: The Grocer, 24 April 2024

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** Girls drinking, smoking and vaping more than boys in the UK

Girls in the UK are drinking, smoking and vaping more than boys, while the country is “top of the charts” globally for child alcohol use, a major report has found.

In one of the largest studies of its kind, the World Health Organisation (WHO) examined data from 280,000 children aged 11, 13 and 15 from 44 countries who were asked about their use of cigarettes, vapes and alcohol.

The research showed girls aged 13 and 15 in the UK tend to be drinking, smoking and vaping more than boys across a broad pattern of behaviour. Two-fifths of girls in England and Scotland have vaped by the age of 15 – higher than in other countries such as France and Germany.

Some 30 per cent of girls aged 15 and 17 per cent of boys aged 15 in England have vaped in the previous 30 days. This is higher than children in several other countries, including Ireland, Canada, and Spain.

The UK seems to have more of an issue with under-age vaping than many other countries, with girls in the UK more likely to have used a vape by the age of 15 than the average for all 44 countries in the study – vaping has now overtaken smoking.

Children aged 11 and 13 in England are the most likely to have ever drunk alcohol compared with youngsters in all the other countries surveyed. Compared with other European countries, rates of drunkenness in the UK were high, particularly among girls.

Children in Scotland and Wales are more likely to have ever smoked cannabis than those in many other countries. Both countries are in the top five globally. Data shows that 15-year-old boys in Scotland (23 per cent) have the highest rates overall for boys. Only girls in Canada score higher (25 per cent).

Hazel Cheeseman, deputy chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, told i: “The UK saw an increase in youth vaping between 2021 and 2022 when this survey was conducted. At the time ASH called for further regulations which we are only now seeing in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill.

“It will be important to keep tracking behaviours across the world as the vaping market is changing very rapidly. However, our main focus must always be on the lethal product – tobacco. Given the continued smoking among British teens, the new generational ban on the sale of tobacco will be a vital public health measure.”

Source: The i, 25 April 2024

See also: Study:A focus on adolescent substance abuse in Europe, Central Asia and Canada ([link removed])
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** Figures Published showing NHS spend on local stop smoking services
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Across England's local authorities, £37.9 million was spent helping people stop smoking in 2023.
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However, the Action on Smoking and Health charity said it is "unacceptable" that these services have been underfunded for many years.
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John Waldron, policy and public affairs manager at Action on Smoking and Health, said: “Stop smoking services have been underfunded for many years and support a quarter of the numbers they did in 2010.
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“As a central plank of our efforts to help smokers quit, this has long been unacceptable.”
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Waldron added the government’s investment of £70 million into the services, alongside its “bold commitment” to phase out the sale of tobacco to those born after 2008 is welcome.
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He said: “Through creating a smokefree generation and supporting current smokers to quit, we are on the path to ending smoking in this country for good.”
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See a selection of local coverage of this story below:
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More than two-thirds of smokers in Doncaster were able to quit with NHS support ([link removed])
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NHS spent more than £150k helping smokers quit in Bedford ([link removed])
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NHS spent hundreds of thousands of pounds helping smokers in Barnet quit last year ([link removed])
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NHS spent hundreds of thousands of pounds helping smokers in Milton Keynes quit last year, new figures show ([link removed])
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** NHS spent hundreds of thousands of pounds helping smokers in Nottinghamshire quit last year ([link removed])
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** 'Why I voted for the Tobacco and Vapes Bill' - Steve Brine

Writing in the Hampshire Chronical, Steve Brine MP, Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, explains why he voted in favour of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill last week.

“Smoking is our biggest preventable killer” writes Brine, continuing that there is “no more obvious target for healthcare gains to save lives lost to cancer, heart disease and stroke each year.”

For Brine, smoking is uniquely placed as the only product legally on sale today that will prove lethal for a majority of its long term users.

Tobacco legislation has been successful in reducing smoking rates over the past decades, Brine writes that “its time to finish the job”. For him, the Bill is a major part of this.

Brine continues by referencing ongoing problems with the NHS where demand is simply outstripping supply beyond the rate at which we can realistically raise the NHS budget.

Therefore, Brine writes that we “must think long-term about population preventative healthcare.”

Brine reference modelling which predicts that, should the smokefree generation policy be enacted, smoking rates among 14 to 30 year olds are likely to be at zero by 2050.

Addressing the concern that some ministers have that there will be a future situation where a 50 year old can legally buy tobacco but a 50 year old cannot, Brine writes “it misses the very point of the smokefree ambition this Bill has at its heart”.

For Brine the legislation amounts to a state mandate that starting to smoke at 18 is not OK and reflects that “when we look back we will ask how did we ever say it was.”
Alongside this, Brine welcomes the additional funding for local stop smoking services to help current smokers quit and calls for a tobacco industry levy to secure long term funding.

Concluding, Brine writes “I have always believed that in a publicly funded healthcare system we have a right – and indeed a responsibility – to act on public health because it becomes everyone’s problem when we don’t.”

Source: Hampshire Chronicle, 25 April 2024

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** Vape shop owner fined £6k for selling to children

A shop owner has been ordered to pay nearly £6,000 for selling vapes to under-18s.
Jawad Qazikhani is director of Anis Trading Limited which trades as The Orange Shop in Norwich Road, Ipswich.

He had pleaded guilty at Ipswich Magistrates' Court to one count of breaching the Nicotine Inhaling Products Regulations 2015.

In May last year, trading standards said it launched its operation after reports from the police and the public and found a vape was sold to a child.

According to the body, advice on age-restricted products was given to the business while a written warning was also issued.

In September, the shop was then tested again by inspectors but vapes were sold for a second time to an under-18.

The business was fined £1,600 at court on Monday, including £3,748 in costs and a £640 victim surcharge.

Source: BBC News, 24 April 2024

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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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