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** 15 October 2019
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** UK
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** Vaping illness: Deaths likely to be very rare beyond US, experts say (#1)
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** Concern over underage sales of e-cigarettes (#2)
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** International
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** Opinion: Big tobacco’s menthol playbook (#3)
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** UK
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**

E-cigarette or vaping linked lung injuries that have killed 29 and sickened more than 1,000 people in the United States are likely to be rare in Britain and other countries where the products suspected to be linked to the outbreak are not widely used, specialists said on Monday 14th October.

Experts in toxicology and addiction said that the 1,299 confirmed and probable American cases of serious lung injuries linked to vaping are “a U.S.-specific phenomenon,” and there is no evidence of a similar pattern of illness in Britain or elsewhere.

“What’s happening in the U.S. is not happening here (in Britain), nor is it happening in any other countries where vaping is common,” said John Britton, a professor and respiratory medicine consultant at Nottingham University and director of the UK Centre for Tobacco & Alcohol Studies. “It’s a localised problem,” he told a London briefing.

U.S. investigators and health officials have said there may be more than one cause for the cases of vaping lung illness. They have pointed to vaping oils containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, as being especially risky. In Britain, which currently has 3.6 million regular e-cigarette users, such oils are banned and advertising of vapes is much more tightly regulated than in the United States, said Ann McNeill, a professor of tobacco addiction at the Institute of Psychiatry Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London.

She and Britton also noted that rates of tobacco cigarette smoking - which can cause lung cancer, heart disease and is known to kill about half of all - are dropping more rapidly in Britain than in the United States. This is partly due to tobacco smokers switching to nicotine-containing e-cigarettes to help them quit, they said. “It would be a great shame if people were deterred from using e-cigarettes because of what’s happening in the US,” McNeill told reporters.

Asked whether he thought bans on e-cigarettes made sense from a public health policy standpoint, Britton said he disagreed with India’s recent decision to do so and similar proposals in the United States, because they send a message to tobacco smokers to continue smoking. “It’s a no-brainer - if you stay on cigarettes you will lose a day of life for every four days that you smoke,” he said. “A flat-out ban (on e-cigarettes) will kill people.”
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Source: Reuters, 14 October 2019
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** See also
Daily Mail: Second-hand smoke from e-cigarettes poses no risk to the public and banning vaping indoors in 2015 was pointless, expert suggests ([link removed])
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Read Article ([link removed])


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** Almost 40% of sellers targeted by councils in England have been caught illegally allowing children to buy e-cigarette products, a report by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) has found. Ninety of the 227 premises tested sold vaping goods to under-age teenagers in 2018-19, data from 34 councils showed.

CTSI's 2018-19 Tobacco Control Survey shows the proportion of sellers allowing children to buy vaping products has risen 12 percentage points in a year, from 28% in 2017-18 to 40% in 2018-19.

Forty-seven of the 90 illegal sales were recorded at specialist e-cigarette suppliers. Discount shops had the second highest illegal sales. The figures also suggest sellers are more than twice as likely to allow under-age purchases of e-cigarette products compared with traditional tobacco products, for which 18% of those tested were found to have acted illegally.

Leon Livermore, chief executive of the CTSI, said it "can only do so much" with its current level of resources. "I'd say to the government, 'If you want your policies delivered effectively, you need to provide appropriate funding and resources through to the front line,'" he said.

He also raised concerns about flavoured products, however PHE's lead on tobacco control, Martin Dockrell rejects this. He told the BBC there is "no evidence that flavours are leading kids who don't smoke into vaping, but there is evidence that they are part of what helps smokers to switch". He added: "There is widespread academic and clinical consensus that while not without risk, vaping is far less harmful than smoking."
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Source: BBC, 14 October 2019
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** See also
CTSI: Tobacco control survey ([link removed])
ASH: Use of e-cigarettes among young people in Great Britain, 2019 ([link removed])
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**
Editorial note: At the time of compiling ASH Daily News, CTSI's Tobacco Control Survey 2018-19 had not been published on CTSI's website, the link in the 'See also' section takes readers to the page containing previous iterations of the CTSI survey.
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Read Article ([link removed])


** International
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** Lincoln Mondy, director of Black Lives / Black Lungs, writes in BuzzFeed on the tobacco industry's succesful lobbying efforts to keep menthol cigarettes legal whilst all other flavours were banned, and their history of manufacturing demand for menthol cigarettes among African Americans:

"In 2009, then-president Obama signed a law that banned all flavored cigarettes — except for menthol, a chemical compound that masks the harshness of tobacco and, as the CDC warns, makes it harder to quit. Menthol cigarettes have disproportionately plagued black communities for decades, and although the law was designed to reduce the number of young people taking up smoking, Big Tobacco successfully lobbied to remove menthol from the ban.

"In effect, black communities were left out of an effort to “rectify” decades of predatory marketing by tobacco companies. And today, as leaders move to take action on e-cigarettes, it looks like the health of my community could once again be traded for political expediency.

"[...] In 1953, only 5% of black smokers used menthol cigarettes. The tactics Big Tobacco used to increase this number included (but was certainly not limited to) littering black neighborhoods with free menthol cigarettes, making menthols cheaper in our neighborhoods, purchasing 10 times more advertising in black communities, and a web of intertwined relationships between the tobacco industry and black civil rights organizations. It worked. Today, nearly 85% of black smokers smoke menthol cigarettes, compared to just 29% of white smokers.

"[...] One of the many black organizations the tobacco industry has ties with is the National Action Network, civil rights leader Al Sharpton’s organization. When a menthol cigarette ban was up for a vote in San Francisco, Sharpton flew to the Bay Area to speak at black churches and radio shows opposing the ban.

"Sharpton and other black leaders who’ve received money from tobacco companies allege that menthol bans are inherently racist. Mail campaigns, advertising dollars, and black spokespeople are used to argue that menthol bans would increase police brutality. The tobacco industry hopes its intended targets, black people, will be so anxious that they’ll look past the actual logistics of a menthol ban. Menthol bans target the point of sale. Retailers who sell menthol risk losing their licenses and facing fines, but individuals possessing or smoking menthol cigarettes do not face punishment. Big Tobacco is cashing in on the black community’s historical and valid anxiety toward police without telling the whole truth.

"[...] Banning some flavors of tobacco products is not enough. It’s a Band-Aid solution, and if political leaders are genuinely working with public health goals in mind, then banning menthol cigarettes and flavored e-cigarettes is the clear answer. Only then can we send the message that Big Tobacco no longer has unfettered access to devastate entire communities."
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Source: BuzzFeed, 13 October 2019
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** See also
Lincoln Mondy: Black Lives / Black Lungs ([link removed])
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Read Article ([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.

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