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Smoking costs Cornwall over £150 million a year
Smoking costs Cornwall over £150 million a year on average, with 47,950 adults believed to be regular smokers. The stark figures were announced as Cornwall Council committed to the Government's ambition for England to be smokefree by 2030.
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) estimates that smoking cost Cornwall £151.2m in 2022/23 through lost productivity (£118.3m), the cost of providing healthcare (£17.3m) and social care (£12.3m), and the cost of smoking-related fires (£3.3m). It is estimated that 10.3 per cent of the Cornish population smokes.
Cllr Barbara Ellenbroek, portfolio holder for children and families, admitted she used to smoke behind the bike sheds from the age of 11. "Back in the 1960s smoking was considered cool - it was an acceptable thing. Times have moved on. I am extremely pleased as an ex-smoker, but also as somebody who has lived with someone who suffered from the consequences of smoking, to second this recommendation.”
Since it was launched in 2013, over 120 councils across the country have signed the local authority declaration on tobacco control, including Cornwall Council in 2019. The declaration was updated in 2022 to reflect changes in government policy. Yesterday's recommendation, which was resolutely supported, asked members of the Cabinet to commit the council to sign the updated declaration and renew their commitment to the tobacco control agenda.
Source: Cornwall Live, 9 May 2024
See also: Local Government Declaration on Tobacco Control
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Grimsby mum-to-be praises local Swap & Stop team who helped her kick smoking habit for good
A Grimsby mum-to-be who has smoked since the age of 19 has credited the "amazing support" she has received from a specialist team at Grimsby Hospital as being the catalyst to help her finally kick the habit for good.
After trying several times to stop smoking over the years, Sam Lee, who runs a local pub, was motivated to try again after finding out she was pregnant.
She accessed the free help available from the Swap and Stop Tobacco Dependency Treatment Team, who provided support through a highly-trained advisor and nicotine replacement therapy.
Sam said: “It's always been in the back of my head that I've wanted to stop smoking and I've spoken to my partner about it a few times, but falling pregnant definitely made me think ‘right, that's it, I need to stop smoking”.
“I just feel like this is a step to fully stopping forever. When we have the baby, the baby's not going to grow up in a smoking household, with a parent having to nip out and have a cigarette here and there," she said.
“Swap & Stop is a service that's there and you'd be silly not to take it. The support you get is just amazing, just try it. Until you do, you don't believe it. I've always thought these patches won't work; this won't work, but it does, it does work.”
Source: Grimsby Live, 9 May 2024
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Chemicals in flavoured vapes could be toxic when heated – study suggests
Researchers used AI to simulate the effects of heating chemicals found in 180 vape flavours. The simulation suggested that heating vaping liquid could produce up to 505 hazardous chemicals, including 127 which are acutely toxic, and 153 which are health hazards.
Liquid flavouring in e-cigarettes is heated to high temperatures, so that it forms vapour which is then inhaled. The original source for the flavourings comes from the food industry, where they are safe, but they were not intended to be heated to high temperatures and inhaled, the study suggests.
Study authors Donal O’Shea, and Dan Wu, from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and Akihiro Kishimoto from 1 IBM Research – Tokyo, Japan, wrote: “The aerosols produced by e-cigarette vaping contain immensely complex uncharacterised mixtures of pyrolysis products, the health implications of which are, as yet, mostly unidentified.”
Jacob George, professor of cardiovascular medicine and therapeutics, University of Dundee – who was not involved in the study, said: “There are close to 40,000 different flavours in the market worldwide today and making sense of their effects will require a combination of techniques including automated mapping algorithms and creation of neural networks such as this.
“While this study cannot give us definitive answers of the risks of flavoured vapes on human health, this study may be a helpful early step to identifying signals that could then lead to further, more in depth research into heat-induced breakdown of chemicals used in flavourings.
“This study has combined artificial intelligence with previously known published information to predict that when heating a combination of chemicals in flavoured vapes there might result in a harmful toxicant being produced, and these predictions can then be tested with further studies.
“There is, as yet, very little good-quality evidence of either safety or harm of these flavourings and so I welcome novel strategies as employed by these researchers.”
Source: Daily Mail, 8 May, 2024
See also: Forecasting vaping health risks through neural network model prediction of flavour pyrolysis reactions
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'Smoking's getting fashionable again - but it's a dirty, filthy habit'
The following letter sent to the York Times:
“Walking in the campus of St John’s University at about 5pm on Friday I was surprised to see students sitting in the seating area outside the bar area smoking.
The University and grounds are a designated ‘no smoking zone’ and yet at least two women sat puffing smoke over themselves and others in the immediate area.
Smoking has once again become a fashionable statement amongst many individuals.
I wish they could witness the harm and damage smoking created in the 60s and 70s, and the large numbers afflicted with smoking-related health problems.
They used to say if you don’t learn from history you are condemned to repeat its mistakes.
I’ve never spoken to anyone who smoked who was pleased that they’d ever started the dirty, filthy habit and who hadn’t regretted it ever since.”
Source: The York Times, May 2024
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