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Government told `no time to waste´ reviving smoking ban legislation
Labour must seize the opportunity to phase out smoking “with both hands”, leading health experts have said as they called on the new Government to revive legislation designed to ban young people from ever being able to legally smoke.
More than 1,000 experts across the health sector have urged the Government to include the law “front and centre” when it announces its legislative programme in the King’s Speech. Former prime minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to crack down on smoking through his flagship Tobacco and Vapes Bill last year.
The Bill – dubbed the “greatest piece of public health legislation in a generation” – had earned wide cross-party support and was progressing through Parliament when the General Election was called. Charities and health experts were dismayed when the Bill was shelved as a result.
“Labour cannot achieve its manifesto commitment to halve differences in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions unless it prioritises ending smoking,” according to a letter written to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
The letter, whose signatories include experts from leading health and care charities including Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), Cancer Research UK and the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), said that the Bill “would have passed by summer recess if the election had not been called”.
The authors, led by Professor Nick Hopkinson, chair of ASH, said: “There is no time to waste.
“Measures to prevent vapes being marketed to children are urgently needed, while they remain accessible as an effective quitting aid for adult smokers.”
The letter, which has been shared with the PA news agency and was due to be published by the medical journal The BMJ on Monday, concludes: “Britain was the birthplace of the tobacco industry, which killed over 100 million people in the 20th century and is on track to kill one billion in the 21st, mainly in low and middle-income countries.
“The UK now has the chance to lead the world in phasing out smoking. The new Government must seize it with both hands.”
Commenting, Prof Hopkinson said: “Together, as concerned doctors and clinicians, charities and public health experts, we have united to urge the new Government to prioritise bringing back the Tobacco and Vapes Bill without delay.”
Prof Sanjay Agrawal, the RCP’s special adviser on tobacco, said: “In my lung cancer clinics and in intensive care units, I see week after week the horrendous harm caused to my patients by smoking.
“Almost without exception, they became addicted as children. Despite the terrible damage smoking has already caused them, many still find it hard to quit.
“The RCP urges the Government to bring back the Tobacco and Vapes Bill without delay so we can create the first smoke-free generation and tackle youth vaping, while ensuring that adult smokers in the UK still have access to e-cigarettes as a quit-aid.”
Source: Daily Mail, 8 July 2024
Open letters to the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Health
Full list of signatories available online. 8th July 2024.
Other news coverage of the letter – Morning Star, MSN, The Standard
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Air pollution can decrease odds of live birth after IVF by 38%, study finds
Air pollution exposure can significantly decrease the chance of a live birth after IVF treatment, according to research that deepens concern about the health impacts of toxic air on fertility.
Pollutant exposure has previously been linked to increased miscarriage rates and preterm births, and microscopic soot particles have been shown to travel through the bloodstream into the ovaries and the placenta. The latest work suggests that the impact of pollution begins before conception by disrupting the development of eggs.
“We observed that the odds of having a baby after a frozen embryo transfer were more than a third lower for women who were exposed to the highest levels of particulate matter air pollution prior to egg collection, compared with those exposed to the lowest levels,” said Dr Sebastian Leathersich, a fertility specialist and gynaecologist from Perth who is due to present the findings on Monday at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual meeting in Amsterdam.
Air pollution is one of the leading threats to human health and is estimated by the World Health Organization (WHO) to have caused 6.7 million deaths in 2019. Microscopic soot particles have been shown to cross from the lungs into the bloodstream and are transported to every organ in the body, raising the risk of heart disease, gastric cancers and dementia. The contamination has also being linked to reductions in intelligence.
The study analysed fertility treatments in Perth over an eight-year period, including 3,659 frozen embryo transfers from 1,836 patients, and tracked whether outcomes were linked to the levels of fine particulate matter, known as PM10. The overall live birthrate was about 28% per transfer. However, the success rates varied in line with exposure to pollutants in the two weeks leading up to egg collection. The odds of a live birth decreased by 38% when comparing the highest quartile of exposure to the lowest quartile.
“These findings suggest that pollution negatively affects the quality of the eggs, not just the early stages of pregnancy, which is a distinction that has not been previously reported,” Leathersich said.
Prof Geeta Nargund, a senior NHS consultant and medical director of abc IVF and Create Fertility, said further work would be crucial to better understand the full impact of air pollution, which disproportionately affects those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
Source: The Guardian, 7 July 2024
Editorial note: Some of the impacts of air pollution on pregnancy appear to be similar to those caused by tobacco smoke. Smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke during pregnancy is responsible for an increased rate of stillbirth, miscarriage and birth defects.
See also: ASH - Smoking, Pregnancy and Fertility
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Pharmacists fume over new law on Australian vape sales
In an effort to stamp out recreational vaping across Australia, pharmacies have just become the only places in the country allowed to sell vapes of any sort. Soon, controversially, they will be able to sell nicotine vapes without a prescription.
The move has infuriated pharmacists who fear that a step intended to improve national health will effectively turn their premises into modern-day tobacconists. “This is just going to create more hassle for me,” a senior pharmacist said wearily from behind the counter.
Australia has some of the strictest vaping laws in the world. Smoking e-cigarettes containing nicotine has been illegal without a prescription since October 2021 and the import of disposable vapes was banned in January. But vaping rates have surged among younger people and children, as cheap vapes have been brazenly sold anyway in corner shops, petrol stations and online.
However, Australia’s Labor government has found itself at loggerheads with the nation’s chemists, over a deal that it was forced to make to secure support for the latest bill in the senate from the Green party, which is staunchly opposed to prohibition, believing it merely drives consumers to the black market.
Independent pharmacies and main chains including Priceline, National Pharmacies, and Blooms have strongly opposed the changes, with many indicating that they will no longer stock vapes.
Anthony Tassone, vice-president of the Pharmacy Guild, said he was “gobsmacked” by the changes. The guild, a representative body for the industry, said it was “insulting” for community pharmacies to become “vape retailers, and vape garbage collectors”.
Opponents of the reforms argue that criminalising recreational vaping has fuelled the black market, exposing more children to cheap, unregulated disposable vapes imported from China and sold illegally in shops and online.
Calls to treat vapes more like cigarettes by allowing them to be sold in other shops but heavily regulating and taxing them have also grown louder, including from Big Tobacco, which controls much of the e-cigarette industry.
The main Australian opposition is a coalition made up of the right-wing National Party, which receives funding from the tobacco giants British American Tobacco and Philip Morris, and the centre-right Liberal Party, which does not. It announced plans to reverse the retail ban on vape sales if it wins the next election, which is due next May at the latest.
Source: The Sunday Times, 7 July 2024
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