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A new analysis by Landman Economics, for public health charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), has found that the collective impact of joblessness and lower earnings for smokers in the North East amounts to an estimated £604 million a year.
More than 17,000 people over the age of 21 are out of work due to smoking, with the relationship between smoking and unemployment driven primarily by smoking-related illnesses and disability.
Ailsa Rutter OBE, Director of Fresh, said: “This is a terrible time for many with job insecurities around COVID and lockdown. We understand that families and our communities now face big challenges. Reducing smoking is vital if we are to level up economic opportunities and close the gap between the richest and poorest and help rebuild the North East economy and people’s prospects after COVID-19.”
Source: Hexham Courant, 28 September 2020
See also: ASH Press Release - New research finds smokers more likely than non-smokers to be without work
ASH report - Smoking, employability, and earnings
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Wales is to become the first country in the UK to see smoking banned on the side-lines at children’s football games in a historic move by the Football Association of Wales (FAW) and FAW Trust.
The new FAW policy will see smoking banned from the side-lines at football matches across Wales for ages 5-11-years old from September 2020, followed by 5-12-years from September 2021 and then 5-13-years from 2022. Though it is being heralded as a ban, it will be up to individual clubs to write a no-smoking rule into their codes of conduct, and coaches and club officials will have to try to enforce it.
The Football Association of Wales (FAW) will ask all 522 junior clubs in the country to tell parents and other spectators not to smoke during matches and training sessions for children aged five to 13. Tobacco control leads and the Welsh government back the move, which the FAW argues will help stop smoking becoming “normalised” for children.
Vaughan Gething, Welsh Health Minister, said: “Voluntary bans like this one help protect children from seeing smoking as acceptable and normal behaviour and can help prevent them from taking up smoking in the first place.”
Suzanne Cass, the chief executive of ASH Wales, said: “Currently in Wales, there is an urgent need to address youth smoking prevalence, which is still at an unacceptable level. When children witness adults lighting up in everyday settings such as football pitches, they come to see smoking as a normal lifestyle choice rather than the deadly addiction that it is.”
Source: The Guardian: 29 September 2020
See also: BBC News - Football: Smoking at children's games to be banned in Wales
Oxford Mail - Oxfordshire Smokefree Sidelines bids to stop smoking at youth football matches
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Anna Gilmore, Director of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath, discusses with Claudia Hammond on the BBC World Service’s Health Check programme, on how Philip Morris International (PMI) is exploiting the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) ambiguous ruling on heated tobacco products.
She highlights the difference between heated tobacco products and electronic cigarettes. Listen from 17:20- 24:20.
Source: BBC Sounds, 23 September 2020
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Major tobacco companies are giving Australian retailers cash payments and taking staff on all-expenses-paid international trips, including to sports events such as the football World Cup, in return for the promotion of their products directly to customers and more prominent cabinet space.
Researchers from the University of Sydney interviewed 10 former employees from tobacco companies operating in Australia. All had worked for the companies within the past five years in sales or marketing roles. Findings from the study reveal the way tobacco companies use covert marketing tactics to exploit loopholes in Australia’s strict tobacco control laws.
In countries such as Australia, with bans on tobacco advertising and promotion, tobacco companies have focused their promotional expenditure on business-to-business relationship marketing activities aimed at retailers. “All informants [former industry employees] reported that financial incentives are used by tobacco companies to drive sales and meet targets,” the study found. “Incentives included rebates for a set number of cigarette sticks sold (such as per 1,000 sticks), cash payments, volume-based price discounts and buy-downs (a price discount whereby the entire price reduction is passed onto the customer).”
Christina Watts, the lead author of the study, said: “We were aware of some of the tactics they were using, but the extent of the incentives and the resources that were allocated into this channel of marketing was quite a surprise. It undermines legislation like plain packaging by incentivising retailers to promote products and features in the products to customers, for example, that a product might have a menthol capsule in it.”
Dr Becky Freeman, the study supervisor from the University of Sydney, said: “Tobacco companies appear to be exploiting current laws by using the retail environment as an indirect channel to reach consumers. By only restricting tobacco marketing practices aimed directly at consumers, Australian legislation has failed to respond to the importance of retail marketing in the promotion of tobacco. We’re calling for Australian laws to be strengthened to prohibit all marketing of tobacco products – with no contributions allowed of any kind to any event, activity, or individual.”
Source: The Guardian, 28 September 2020
See also: Taylor&Francis - The last line of marketing’: Covert tobacco marketing tactics as revealed by former tobacco industry employees
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The Dutch competition watchdog on Tuesday, 29 September, said it had fined four major tobacco makers a total of 82 million Euros for “distorting competition.”
The tobacco manufacturers are Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco (BAT), Japan Tobacco International (JTI), and Van Nelle.
In a statement, the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) said the four had illegally exchanged information about future pricing plans in the 2008-2011 period. It said that all four cigarette makers have filed objections against the decision.
Source: Reuters, 29 September 2020
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PQ: Electronic Cigarettes and Tobacco: Northern Ireland
Asked by Louise Haigh Labour, Sheffield, Heeley
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what discussions his Department has had with retailers in Northern Ireland on the notification required to sell (a) tobacco and (b) e-cigarette products after the end of the transition period; and when his Department plans to issue guidance on that subject.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt Conservative, Portsmouth North and Paymaster General
Further to the answer given to PQ52196 on 4 June 2020 and the approach set out by the Government in the Commons Paper of 20 May, guidance for Northern Ireland businesses was published on 7 August. This is available on gov.uk, and already includes some information on fluorinated gases, the movement of green and amber waste, tobacco and e-cigarette products.
We have established the Business Engagement Forum and have heard the call for further clarity from business on the requirements of the Protocol, and on the support that the UK Government will provide. We recognise that with implementation work and Joint Committee discussions still underway, we cannot provide all details at this stage. We will set out further information as soon as possible.
We have established a new and unprecedented Trader Support Service backed by funding of up to £200m, providing end-to-end support for businesses engaged in new processes under the Protocol. The service will start to go live later this month so that businesses can register and begin to receive information about preparing for the end of the transition period. In the meantime, all traders who wish to draw upon its support can register their interest on gov.uk.
We have also committed to exploring further support to those agrifood producers engaging with new sanitary and phytosanitary processes, with further detail to be set out in due course.
Source: Hansard, 28 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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