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** 3 September 2020
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** UK
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** Leeds: People in Leeds react after smoking ban announced outside Leeds General Infirmary and St James's Hospital (#1)
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** Birmingham: 48,000 illegal cigarettes and weapon uncovered in Walsall shop raids (#2)
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** Scotland: Fewer under-fives admitted to hospital during 'take it outside' smoking campaign (#3)
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** International
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** Juul to cut jobs and explore exiting Asia and Europe (#4)
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** Study: E-cigarettes are no better than alternative aids to quit nicotine (#5)
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** UK
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**

New rules at Leeds Teaching Hospitals mean that smoking is no longer allowed on hospital grounds, including outdoor areas, as of Tuesday, September 1. Many people reacted positively to the announcement, saying it was "about time."

Emma Louise Watson said: "I support. Last year I was in the respiratory unit for an asthma flare up. When I was discharged, I couldn't stand next to the building entrance to wait for my taxi as there was so many people smoking. I had to stand 10m away from the pickup point/entrance."

Gill Cooper said: "Definitely support. It's awful walking through the smell and smoke when entering and leaving."

Louise Woodhouse said: "Yes. There's nothing worse than taking your child for an outpatients’ appointment when you have to walk through a cloud of smoke first to reach the building."
Elle Lindsey said: "I'm a smoker but totally support this!!!! Great idea."

However, some people did not support the rules and said it should be up to individuals to decide if they want to smoke.

Polly Hales said: "People who are in hospital get stressed and need a smoke. As long as they smoke in a smoking shelter, I say let them smoke." Other people supported the ban but were concerned about how it would be enforced.

Sophie Lawn said: "In one of the wards, the patients used to open the emergency exit and smoke outside there when it wasn't allowed. They will still do it."

Source: Yorkshire Evening Post, 2 September 2020

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Illegal cigarettes, tobacco and even an illegal weapon have been seized from shops across Walsall. Three highly-trained tobacco detector dogs – Scamp, Yoyo and Cooper – uncovered 2,415 packs of cigarettes from the locations, which if genuine would have a purchase value of nearly £25,000. Officers also seized 233 pouches (11,650 grams) of illegal hand rolling tobacco, with a street value of an additional £4,000 pounds.

The illicit stash was located in car boots, holdalls and storerooms. In one store, the cigarettes found there had been smuggled into the country as electrical goods, to bypass customs officers.

A man was found to be in possession of an offensive weapon, in the form of CS gas. Police arrested him and his home was searched – as a result nearly 18,000 cigarettes were found.

Councillor Garry Perry, cabinet member for public protection in Walsall said: "Well done Scamp, Yoyo and Cooper and well done to all the Trading Standards and police officers involved.

"It is clear by the sheer amount of illegal tobacco found and the sophisticated hiding places used that this is not simply a man with a van bringing a few extra packs in on the side. It is a full scale operation by organised criminals who use the profits to help finance even more serious crimes such as people trafficking for prostitution and modern day slavery, money laundering, and even terrorism.”

Trading Standards investigations into the recent raids and illegal cigarette sales are ongoing.

Source: Birmingham Mail, 2 September 2020

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The number of under-five-year-olds admitted to hospital with asthma related complaints dropped following the Take it Right Outside (TiRO) campaign in Scotland, researchers have found. Take it Right Outside was a national mass media initiative launched in 2014 encouraging smokers to smoke cigarettes outside their own home to protect children and other family members from second-hand smoke.

The study by staff at the Universities of Aberdeen, Stirling and Glasgow, which has been published in The Lancet Public Health, looked at data from all hospital admissions in Scotland (2000-2018) for all those aged 16 and under, and found that after the campaign there was a drop in hospital admissions for under five-year-olds for asthma of around 25% between 2014-2018. The same reduction was not observed in children aged older than five years old—something that could be attributed to those age groups spending less time in the home and perhaps in less close contact with a parent who may smoke.

Professor Steve Turner, a consultant paediatrician at the University of Aberdeen and NHS Grampian, said: "We believe that parents who smoke have taken on board the message of Take it Right Outside campaign and created a smoke free bubble around their children. Parents who smoke often find it hard to quit but we know from other work we and others have done that they can change their smoking behaviour, e.g. smoke less, create a smoke free house.

"This study shows there was a fall in asthma admissions among children aged under five relative to the underlying trend after TiRO was launched. Whilst we cannot say conclusively that one is a direct result of the other, the figures are encouraging and suggests that public health mass media campaigns that complement broader changes in legislation can make a difference."

Source: Medical XPress, 2 September 2020

See also: Steve Turner et al. Associations between a smoke-free homes intervention and childhood admissions to hospital in Scotland: an interrupted time-series analysis of whole-population data ([link removed](20)30178-X/fulltext) , The Lancet Public Health (2020).

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** International
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E-cigarette maker Juul Labs Inc. has announced that it is planning another significant round of layoffs and considering halting sales across Europe and Asia. That could mean pulling out of as many as 11 countries and shrinking the startup’s footprint to its core markets of the USA, Canada, and the UK.

Source: Wall Street Journal, 2 September 2020 (paywall)

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According to a new study at the University of California, San Diego, people who use e-cigarettes to help them stop smoking are no more likely to be abstinent a year later, defined as having quit vaping as well as smoking, than those who use alternative aids or nothing at all.

John Pierce and his colleagues looked at the outcomes of 32,320 adults in the US who were asked about their use of tobacco products. A year later, each person was asked if they had attempted to quit smoking, the methods they had used and whether they had been successful. The next year, they were asked whether they had remained abstinent from both smoking and vaping for 12 months or more.

Of the 9021 people who initially said they smoked on a daily basis, 2770 had attempted to quit. Around 24 per cent used e-cigarettes as a cessation aid, while about 19 per cent used other aids, such as clinically approved drugs and other nicotine replacement therapies, like patches, sprays and lozenges. The remainder of the group didn’t use any products.

Around 82 per cent of those who had attempted to quit were still smoking by the end of the study period.

In a second piece of research, based on a separate group of 2535 adults from the same study, the team found similar results – the participants were equally likely to quit smoking regardless of the method they used. But those that used e-cigarettes were more likely to still be using these products two years later, suggesting they were more likely to remain dependent on nicotine, says Pierce.

The findings contradict several other studies that suggest that e-cigarettes can help people quit smoking – although many studies do find that people who stop smoking do continue to use e-cigarettes for more than a year, says Jamie Brown at University College London in the UK.

And we don’t yet know if long-term use of e-cigarettes will pose problems for health, says Pierce. “E-cigarettes are not harmless,” he says.

Brown agrees. “It’s certainly not going to be as good for people as not using them,” he says. “But it’s also going to be a lot better for them than if they’d smoked cigarettes.”

E-cigarettes might still provide a useful quitting tool for some people, says Leonie Brose at King’s College London. E-cigarettes might encourage “additional quitters” who might not have made an attempt to quit smoking otherwise, she says.

“In these studies, e-cigarettes don’t come out very well, but neither does anything else,” says Brose.

Counselling is an important factor, she says – people who want to give up smoking should ideally have support and be informed of how best to avoid situations in which they are likely to smoke, and how to deal with cravings.

“It’s not all about nicotine delivery,” she says. “Quitting needs to be better supported. Without support, none of those options are very effective.”

Source: The New Scientist, 2 September 2020

See also: Role of e-cigarettes and pharmacotherapy during attempts to quit cigarette smoking: The PATH Study 2013-16. ([link removed]) 2 September 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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