From Action on Smoking and Health <[email protected]>
Subject ASH Daily News for 03 February 2021
Date February 3, 2021 2:54 PM
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** 03 February 2021
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** UK
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** Scotland: ‘Don’t Wait’ NHS campaign launches encouraging people to quit smoking (#1)
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** International
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40% of countries show no progress in reducing cigarette smoking in adolescents over last 20 years, according to new study (#2)
India: No tax increase for tobacco products in this year’s Budget (#3)


** Israel: Proportion of adults who smoke or are overweight on the rise (#4)
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Decades of progress on extreme poverty now in reverse due to COVID-19 (#5)


** UK
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Scotland’s three largest health boards have launched a joint campaign called ‘Don’t Wait’ to encourage Scots to quit smoking. The campaign, launched by NHS Lanarkshire, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and NHS Lothian in partnership, focuses on the harms smoking can cause and the free NHS stop smoking services available to aid quitting.

The campaign features NHS respiratory consultant Dr Colin Church emphasising that it is never too late to see the benefits that come from quitting smoking. Robbie Preece, Tobacco Control Programme Manager at NHS Lothian, said “Working across the three largest boards in Scotland allows us to share resources and we’re aiming to have a larger impact with this campaign. We are offering telephone and video support, and relaying the key message that quitting smoking is the single most important thing you can do to improve your health.”

Source: The Daily Record, 2 February 2021

See also: #DontWaitToQuit ([link removed])
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** International
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A new study published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health journal shows that 40% of countries have made no progress in reducing cigarette smoking in adolescents over the past 20 years. The study used Global Youth Tobacco Surveys of more than 1.1 million 13-15-year-olds from 140 countries between 1999 and 2018 to show that the prevalence of smoking cigarettes on at least one day during the past 30 days decreased in 80 countries (57%) but was unchanged or increased in 60 countries (43%).

A survey of more than 530,000 adolescents from 143 countries between 2010 and 2018 showed that 17.9% of boys and 11.5% of girls used any tobacco product on at least one day during the past month.

The study found varying prevalence of smoking cigarettes and using other tobacco products across different regions, which the researchers suggest was due to differences in how tobacco control measures are implemented and monitored and whether countries had ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Whilst the prevalence of smoking cigarettes and the use of other tobacco reduced between 1999 and 2018 in the Western Pacific region and in the European region, in the Eastern Mediterranean region and South-East Asian region prevalence rose, by 3.5% and 3.3% per 10 calendar years respectively.

Source: BrightSurf, 2 February 2021

Editorial Note: The study classified electronic cigarettes as ''other tobacco products''.
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No new tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products has been announced in this year’s Budget in India. There had been speculation that the government was looking to tax increases in order to increase revenue to offset losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it decided against the measure. The government had raised cigarette prices sharply in last year’s Budget.

As a country India is behind other nations in terms of tobacco taxation measures. In a recent Tobacconomic report, India scored 1.88 out of 5 points on its tobacco tax scorecard, below the global average of 2.07. The higher the score, the stronger the country’s taxation measures in relation to international best practice and evidence. The Goods and Services Tax on cigarettes and tobacco products in India is currently 28%.
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** Source: Business Today, 2 February 2021
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See also: Tobacconomics: Cigarette Tax Scorecard ([link removed])
Read Article ([link removed])


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Nearly one in five Israeli adults smoke and over half of Israeli adults are overweight, according to a new report from the Israel National Institute for Health Policy and Health Services Research.

The report examined 40 parameters linked to heart disease and vascular disease, pre-cancer screenings, mental health, infectious disease, and the promotion of a healthy lifestyle using data from 2019.

It found that 19.6% of the Israeli population aged 16-74 are smokers – 27.3% of men and 12.4% of women. This marked a slight increase from 2018, and Israel has a higher percentage of smokers than the OECD average of 18%. Excess weight is also a problem, with 62% of men and 55% of women overweight.
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** Source: Israel Hayom, 3 February 2021
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Two decades of progress in the reduction of extreme poverty have been pushed into a sharp reverse by a combination of the impact of COVID-19, the climate emergency, and increasing debt, according to experts. Figureheads from groups such as the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Overseas Development Institute’s Chronic Poverty Advisory Network, and the Brookings Institution are warning of a growing crisis in multiple areas from education to employment, likely to be felt for years to come.

In January, the World Bank updated its forecast for the expected number of newly impoverished people this year from between 88 and 115 million to the new range of between 119 and 124 million. There have been worrying increases in numbers of those living below the poverty line of $1.90 (£1.30) and on less than $3.20 (£2.35) between June 2021 and January 2021. The increase reverses trends since the 1960s which has seen global extreme poverty rates fall from 80% to 10%.

The ILO, meanwhile, says that global workers lost $3.7tn in earnings during the pandemic. In its annual Global Wage Report issued late last year, it reported that wages had fallen or grown more slowly across the board in the first six months of 2020. Alex van Trostenburg, Managing Director at the World Bank, points out that the pressure on wages is starker in poorer countries, where the majority of employment is in the informal sector.

Andrew Shepherd, from the Overseas Development Institute’s Chronic Poverty Advisory Network, points out that cuts to western aid budgets have significantly exacerbated the crisis. Shepherd points to the risk of new impoverishment in middle-income countries where families have left poverty in recent memory but are now vulnerable to sinking back into it.

Homi Kharas, a senior fellow for global economy and development at the Brookings Institution, adds that the impact of the COVID crisis is likely to last well beyond 2030 for most of the global new poor. In a paper last year he predicted that half of the rise in poverty could be permanent, with poverty numbers higher than the baseline by 60 million people by 2030.

Source: The Guardian, 3 February 2021
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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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