From Action on Smoking and Health <[email protected]>
Subject ASH Daily News for 15 March 2021
Date March 15, 2021 11:00 AM
  Links have been removed from this email. Learn more in the FAQ.
  Links have been removed from this email. Learn more in the FAQ.
View this email in your browser ([link removed])


** 15 March 2021
------------------------------------------------------------


** UK
------------------------------------------------------------


** Government accused of ‘cat and mouse’ game over public health funding (#1)
------------------------------------------------------------


** Hancock: Health reform will be ‘difficult to pull off’ (#2)
------------------------------------------------------------


** BBC Radio Bristol: Mental health and smoking (#3)
------------------------------------------------------------


** International
------------------------------------------------------------


** Ireland: Newsagents call for tobacco giants to be banned from using discounts (#4)
------------------------------------------------------------


** US: Fewer smokers seem to be trying to quit during pandemic, report finds (#5)
------------------------------------------------------------


** UK
------------------------------------------------------------


**
------------------------------------------------------------


** Matt Hancock has moved to allay fears over the future of councils’ public health teams following an NHS Providers report published last month which proposed that the NHS should take over the commissioning of key public health services. But his department is also facing mounting pressure to reveal exactly how much funding public health teams will be getting next year, with just three weeks to go until the beginning of the new financial year.

Mr Hancock is understood to have privately reassured senior local government figures that there is no plan to move public health services to the NHS, and expressed frustration that the NHS has not delivered more on prevention. Last week at a Local Government Association councillors forum meeting, Mr Hancock said that public health directors have been “strengthened and needed so much during the crisis, to the extent where if we didn’t have them we would have had to invent them”.

Sector figures had been told by government officials that an announcement would be made alongside the local government financial settlement last month. Since then, they have been repeatedly told “for the last few weeks on the trot” that an announcement would be made “next week”. The spending review revealed government plans to freeze public health budgets next year, but it is still not known whether that freeze includes inflation. Last year the public health grant was £3.2bn. The LGA is calling for it to rise in line with the growth in overall NHS funding to at least £3.9 billion a year by 2024/25.

Source: Local Government Chronicle, 12 March 2021
------------------------------------------------------------
Read Article ([link removed])


**
------------------------------------------------------------


** The health secretary Matt Hancock has admitted that plans to integrate health and care services will be a “difficult thing to pull off”, and revealed that he feels “very acutely” the tension between social care responsibilities residing at a local level while there is also national accountability. At a Local Government Association councillors’ forum session last week, Mr Hancock discussed the thinking behind plans published in the future of health and care white paper last month.

The government's proposals include devolving some decision making to place-based partnerships between the NHS and local government. But Mr Hancock told councillors that the “fundamental challenge” for his department is that “some services ultimately are legitimately accountable to local taxpayers through you, and others are legitimately accountable to national taxpayers through me”. “We need to bring these services as close together as we can, reducing bureaucracy that can hold them apart and cause silos whilst maintaining accountability [...] And that is a difficult thing to pull off" he said. He reassured councillors that “implementation of this will come in 14 months time”, adding: “Parliament should be doing the work now while we get on with putting in place what is needed.”

Birmingham City Council councillor and Smokefree Councillor Network member, Paulette Hamilton accused him of putting “the cart before the horse” by asking for more assurance before the government’s long-awaited plans for social care reform have been revealed. “We still don’t know how social care will be structured [...] It’s so disjointed at the moment and we know more funding is needed, but you’re now asking for more assurance which concerns me a little bit” she said. Mr Hancock responded that “ultimately social care responsibilities are of course at the local level but there is also national accountability and I feel it very acutely – it was demonstrated in the crisis. Therefore we do need to know what’s going on and to have a way of making this work between local and national level.”

Source: Local Government Chronicle, 12 March 2021
------------------------------------------------------------
Read Article ([link removed])


**
------------------------------------------------------------


** BBC Radio Bristol Breakfast host Ali Vowles spoke to Dr Gemma Taylor, Addiction & Mental Health Group at University of Bath and Joanne, an ex-smoker who quit last year, about new research showing quitting smoking can improve mental health.

------------------------------------------------------------


** Time: 1:11:20 - 1:18:29
------------------------------------------------------------


**
Source: BBC Sounds, 13 March 2021
------------------------------------------------------------
Listen Here ([link removed])


** International
------------------------------------------------------------


**
------------------------------------------------------------


** Newsagents in Ireland are calling on the Government to ban tobacco companies from discounting larger packs of cigarettes. Vincent Jennings, CEO of the Convenience Stores and Newsagents Association, says tobacco companies have too much control over price-setting, undermining health policy and lowering the tax take.

“It really is phenomenally frustrating to see that tobacco companies [...] are managing to post enormous sales, great profits, based upon just very, very clever usage of the psychological effect of price,” said Mr Jennings. Bigger box brands of more than 20 cigarettes are growing in popularity, Mr Jennings said, as they offer smokers ‘bulk’ discounts of around 6-7%. “Of course, the more you have in your pocket the more you consume,” he said.

He wrote to the Departments of Health, Finance and Enterprise last week asking for a ban on packs of more than 20 cigarettes or price controls based on a pro rata price per cigarette. The move comes after Imperial Tobacco told retailers they would not increase wholesale prices when the VAT rate went back up to 23% from 21% this month.

The Government has set a target of cutting smoking prevalence to less than 5% of the population by 2025. But Mr Jennings said that policy is being undermined by tobacco companies, which are absorbing VAT and excise increases to ensure smokers don’t pay more as taxes increase. “Tobacco companies also use price as a promoting tool. They use it in a marketing fashion,” Mr Jennings said.
------------------------------------------------------------


**
Source: Independent ie, 15 March 2021
------------------------------------------------------------
Read Article ([link removed])


**
------------------------------------------------------------


** A new report shows a decline in Americans' engagement with quitting support. the non-profit North American Quitline Consortium (NAQC) found a steep drop in calls during 2020 to the National Cancer Institute-operated portal that connects callers to local quitlines. At the same time, cigarette sales increased after years of steady decline, according to data from the Treasury Department.

Last year, calls to the national portal linking people to quitlines in all 50 states, D.C., Puerto Rico and Guam decreased by 27% compared to 2019, which translates to a drop of roughly 190,000 calls — the lowest call volume seen since 2007, according to data compiled by the NAQC. In recent years, annual call numbers have ranged from 700,000 to 900,000, the report said. Meanwhile, cigarette consumption rates also reflected an “alarming trend,” the report stated, citing federal data from the Treasury Department. Although sales of cigarettes had been decreasing by up to 5% annually since 2015, there was a slight increase of 1% in the first 10 months of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.

Not only was there an overall decrease in call volume in 2020, but the report also noted that the decline appeared to mimic the timeline of the pandemic. The largest drop (39%) occurred in the three-month period from April to June during the height of lockdowns and when infections and deaths were skyrocketing. Furthermore, rates of anxiety and depression were also on the rise at the time, with a third of Americans showing signs of the pandemic’s psychological toll.

Source: Washington Post, 12 March 2021
------------------------------------------------------------



** See also: NAQC - Report on the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on smoking cessation ([link removed])
------------------------------------------------------------
Read Article ([link removed])
Have you been forwarded this email? Subscribe to ASH Daily News here. ([link removed])

For more information call 020 7404 0242, email [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) or visit www.ash.org.uk

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.

============================================================
Our mailing address is:
Action on Smoking and Health
6th Floor New House
Hatton Garden
London
EC1N 8JY

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can ** update your preferences ([link removed])
or ** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
Screenshot of the email generated on import

Message Analysis