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** 9 April 2021
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** International
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** Saudi Arabia bans selling tobacco to children and smoking around them (#1)
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** US study: Smokefree workplace laws curbing vaping have negative impact (#2)
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** DFWC ramps up 'critical campaign' ahead of Illicit Trade Protocol meeting (#3)
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** New tobacco tax manual released by WHO showing ways to save money and build back better after COVID-19 (#4)
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** Study: the future of cancer for Americans (#5)
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** Link of the Week
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** ASH webinar on public health reforms (#6)
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** International
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** Saudi Arabia has banned the sale of tobacco to teenagers under 18-years-old and smoking in areas where children are present, according to state media. The country has also banned the importing and selling of toys or candy that are made to look like cigarettes or bear images that encourage children to smoke. The move has been widely welcomed across the country by parents and teachers.
Saudi Arabia hopes to reduce tobacco consumption to 5% by 2030 and has already banned smoking in public places like airports, restaurants, educational institutes, and public transport in 2019. The kingdom also introduced a tax on tobacco products and raised the price of shisha by 100%.
Source: The National News, 8 April 2021
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** A new study from researchers at the Yale School of Public Health has found that adding vaping restrictions to existing smokefree workplace laws, as implemented by some states and localities in the US, has had a negative impact on reductions in smoking achieved by such laws.
The study, published in the journal Addiction, updated existing research on the effect of smokefree workplace laws, much of which was undertaken before e-cigarettes became widely used. From 2014 to 2018, increased adoption of smoke‐free worksite laws in the United States was associated with reductions in both current smoking and recent vaping, as well as increases in smoking cessation.
However, researchers found that adding workplace restrictions on vaping to these laws may have blunted the positive impact smoke-free laws could have had in reducing smoking by over 50%. Further, researchers found the addition of vaping restrictions was not associated with a reduction in recent vaping among adults, as the restrictions aimed for. Researchers pointed to a number of reasons for this, including a reduction in smokers’ incentives to quit if vaping was restricted to the same extent as smoking but they concluded more research is needed to fully understand the restrictions’ effects.
Source: Medical Xpress, 8 April 2021
See also: Addiction - Adding vaping restrictions to smoke-free air laws: associations with conventional and electronic cigarette use ([link removed])
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** Ahead of the next Meeting of the Parties to the World Health Organization’s Illicit Trade Protocol (ITP), the Duty Free World Council (DFWC) President Sarah Branquinho has said that the ITP poses a potential threat to the duty-free tobacco sector and it is one which the industry must mobilise to combat.
Article 13 of the ITP, which aims to eliminate illicit trade in tobacco, suggests that a study should be carried out to establish “the extent to which” duty free contributes to illicit trade. Whilst the DFWC, which represents the duty-free industry internationally, says it supports implementation of the ITP, the body has repeatedly rejected the suggestion that the industry is linked to illicit trade and maintains that duty free has a “safe, secure and legitimate supply chain.”
Representatives from the 62 countries which have signed and ratified ITP will meet in November this year, at which a roadmap for the study investigating links between duty free and illicit trade is expected to be presented.
Branquinho has called for retailers “to engage now locally to ensure that the relevant authorities understand that the supply chain is secure and that there is no call for the duty-free industry to be penalised.” The DFWC is sharing papers with industry stakeholders across the world calling for the study to be “fair and objective” and conducted with the duty-free industry’s participation and for the study only to be carried out after time is given for control measures to be implemented.
Source: DFNI Online, 8 April 2021
See also: WHO FCTC - Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products ([link removed])
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** The World Health Organisation (WHO) has published a new Technical Manual on Tobacco Tax Policy and Administration which shows countries ways to reduce health expenditures and productivity lost due to tobacco use worldwide. Over US$ 1.4 trillion (£1.2 trillion) is estimated to be lost in health expenditures is lost productivity due to tobacco use worldwide.
WHO says that improved tobacco taxation policies can be a key way to build back better after COVID-19 by freeing up additional financial resources for governments. In 2018, only 38 countries, covering 14% of the global population, had sufficiently high tobacco taxes, defined as taxing at least 70% of the cost of tobacco products.
Source: WHO, 8 April 2021
See also: WHO - Technical manual on tobacco tax administration ([link removed])
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** A new study published in the journal JAMA Network suggests that whilst lung cancer cases and deaths are expected to continue to decline, likely due to the success of anti-smoking campaigns, deaths from obesity-related cancers like pancreas, liver, and colon cancer, are expected to hold or increase. Lung cancer is however expected to remain the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in 2040.
Breast, melanoma, lung, and colon cancers are expected to remain the most common types of cancer in the US, with patients dying most often from lung, pancreatic, liver, and colorectal cancers. Melanoma is expected to become the second most common cancer by 2040 with breast cancer projected as the most common, lung cancer third, and colon cancer fourth.
In general, researchers expect cancer cases to continue to increase overall in the US. However, researchers expect the number of people dying from cancer to continue to fall in the future, as has been so since 1991. The study worked by combining cancer incidence and death rates with updated demographic data from 2016 to project cancer cases and deaths out to 2040.
Source: Medical Xpress, 8 April 2021
See also: Jama Network - Estimated projection of US cancer incidence and death to 2040 ([link removed])
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Read Article ([link removed])
** Link of the Week
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Following the Government's announcement that Public Health England's health improvement functions will largely move to a newly created Office for Health Promotion and the publication of a policy paper by the Department of Health and Social Care on transforming the public health system, ASH held a webinar on 1st April 2021 with public health experts to explore whether the proposed arrangements deliver on the need for a more ambitious approach to addressing preventable ill health and health inequalities going forward.
You can access this webinar here. ([link removed])
The Government has launched a consultation on its public health reforms, which we encourage you to respond to.
You can find this consultation here. ([link removed])
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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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