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Philip Morris backed organisation is targeting UK smoking cessation services
Smoking cessation teams in the UK have been warned against taking funding from a tobacco industry backed organisation that has been boycotted by the World Health Organization, The BMJ has found.
The warning came after at least two smoking cessation initiatives, at an NHS trust and a local authority, were targeted this month by an organisation funded by Philip Morris International, reported Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), a public health charity.
Global Action to End Smoking (GA), formerly known as the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, received $140m from the tobacco giant last year. GA’s mission is “to end combustible tobacco use,” including by running education programmes. Its smoking cessation programme looks at “reduced-risk nicotine tools” and “addressing misinformation regarding the nature and impact of nicotine.”
Elizabeth Starren, a consultant in respiratory and general medicine and lead of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s “Smokeless” smoking cessation project received an email on behalf of Cliff Douglas, GA’s chief executive, on 3 June, offering to discuss grants and a “new educational effort.” The email said Douglas was “in London . . . to meet with public health experts about his organisation’s plans, which includes new grants the Foundation is making available in the UK and a new educational effort.”
Made aware of the approaches, the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training, a partly government funded organisation that supports local smoking cessation services, emailed stakeholders on 7 June, warning that because of GA’s “ties to the tobacco industry, any offer made by them or their representatives should be rejected.” It warned that meeting with or accepting funding from the “tobacco industry or their representatives” would breach WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
Nicholas Hopkinson, professor of respiratory medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London, said, “It is . . . both disappointing and frankly a bit weird that a tobacco industry funded organisation is trying to ingratiate itself with smoking cessation services” in the UK, which has a well known strong commitment to the framework convention’s article 5.3, which was “established to exclude the lethal and immoral tobacco industry.”
Critics also point out that GA has yet to receive any other funding apart from PMI’s.
On 6 June WHO issued an alert to member states that the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World had changed its name to Global Action to End Smoking. “WHO maintains its firm position that it will not partner with this organisation and strongly recommends that governments and the public health community do the same,” the statement said.
Source: The BMJ, 21 June 2024
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Labour to add dozens of peers to back its policies and improve gender balance
Labour is to appoint dozens of peers within weeks in an attempt to push through its policies and improve the representation of women in the House of Lords, the Guardian has learned.
Senior Labour figures have drawn up a list of peerages to bolster the party benches and help implement its legislative programme if it wins the election on 4 July. The Conservatives have 104 more peers than Labour, while fewer than a third of the 784 members of parliament’s second chamber are women.
The plan comes despite Keir Starmer’s pledge to eventually abolish the Lords and amid growing concerns over the ballooning size and cost of the chamber.
There are now 171 Labour peers, of which about 130 reliably turn up to vote on a day-to-day basis. The Conservatives have 275 peers, the Liberal Democrats 79, and 180 peers are non-aligned. It means that unless Starmer appoints about 100 peers, the Tories will outnumber Labour in the upper chamber.
“We need people who are willing to do the work and do the hard yards, and do it for a long period of time,” a senior Labour official said. “[Labour’s leader in the Lords] Angela Smith and [opposition chief whip] Roy Kennedy have been saying: if you want to get your legislation through you’re going to have to appoint a load. We are at risk early on of having things delayed if we don’t address the balance.”
The party’s manifesto states: “Reform is long overdue and essential. Too many peers do not play a proper role in our democracy. Hereditary peers remain indefensible. And because appointments are for life, the second chamber of parliament has become too big.”
Source: The Guardian, 23 June 2024
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Map reveals the UK’s dodgy vape hotspots for illegal e-cigs as 1.2 million seized
More than 1.2million illegal vapes have been seized across the UK in the last year, shocking figures show.
Unregulated devices could be packed full of "harmful chemicals", experts warn.
Most illegal e-cigarettes (431,005) were found in Kent, where 114,727 illicit cigarettepackets were also discovered. This was closely followed by Anglesey in Wales, where 352,704 vapes were seized between January 2023 and February 2024. In third place was Swansea with 154,737, then Lancashire with 54,985 and Hertfordshire with 16,062.
Some of the seized products had a liquid capacity of 14ml - seven times the legal limit.
Previous studies have found illegal devices to contain high levels of toxic substances such as lead, nickel and chromium. Exposure to all three has been linked to damage to the lungs, liver, heart, immune system and brain - as well as cancer. Some units also contained harmful chemicals like those in cigarettes, also known to have significant negative health impacts.
John Britton, an epidemiology professor at the University of Nottingham who sits on the Royal College of Physicians Tobacco Group, said: "Lead is a neurotoxin and impairs brain development, chrome and nickel are allergens and metal particles in general in the bloodstream can trigger blood clotting and can exacerbate cardiovascular disease.
"The carbonyls are mildly carcinogenic and so with sustained use will increase the risk of cancer - but in legal products, the levels of all of these things is extremely low so the lifetime risk to the individual is extremely small."
Kate Pike, lead officer at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, added: "There is a significant number of illegal products on the market, which does not help when we are trying to support public health response which is to ensure the products are much safer than tobacco for smokers looking to quit.
"The main concern is that young people are getting their hands on these products. We do not want children or adults getting addicted to something at all like this. We know that legal compliant vapes pose a fraction of the risk of smoking but we do not know what the risk is from illegal vapes."
Source: The Sun, 21 June 2024
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