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** 10 September 2021
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** UK
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** Councillor urges pension fund committee to drop tobacco investment (#1)
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** 'Revolutionary' lung cancer drug made available on NHS in England (#2)
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** International
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** Federal officials delay ruling on whether to ban market-leading Juul e-cigarettes (#3)
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** "Progress made" towards making Ireland tobacco-free by 2025 (#4)
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** Opinion: Social media misinformation about e-cigarettes is harmful for smokers (#5)
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** Parliamentary Activity
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** Parliamentary questions (#6)
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** Links of the Week
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** NHS Digital: Statistics on NHS Stop Smoking Services in England - April 2020 to March 2021 (#7)
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** BBC Panorama: Dirty Secrets of the Cigarette Business (#8)
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** UK
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** A Nottinghamshire county councillor is claiming victory after he persuaded the Nottinghamshire Pension Funds Committee to investigate whether it should be investing in tobacco as part of its portfolio. Councillor Lee Waters of the Ashfield Independents asked if the committee could look at its £13 million investment in a tobacco company in its pension pot as part its oversight.

Waters said: "It’s a declining industry and what message does this give everyone? Why are we looking to engage with companies to make them change and not just disinvesting them?"

Source: Nottingham Post, 9 September 2021
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** A revolutionary new drug to treat lung cancer called Sotorasib will be fast-tracked to NHS patients after it was proven in clinical trials to stop lung cancer growing for seven months, making patients in England the first in Europe to benefit from the drug. The drug targets the mutation on the KRAS gene which has been called the "Death Star" mutation because of how difficult it is to penetrate.

Initially, about 600 lung cancer patients will be given the drug in England within weeks after an early access deal was struck with manufacturer Amgen UK. Thousands of cancer patients are expected to ultimately benefit from the drug which works by making the KRAS mutation inactive, stopping cell division and cancer growth.

NHS England has recently secured several other drug deals, including a cholesterol-lowering jab which is expected to prevent about 55,000 heart attacks in the next three years and another lung cancer drug which aims to reduce the chance of cancer returning.


Source: The Guardian, 10 September 2021
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** International
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** The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday 9th September delayed its high-stakes decision on whether to permit bestselling vaping brand Juul to stay on the market. The FDA did however reject applications for nearly 950,000 e-cigarettes and other related products to be on the US market.

Parents, politicians, and public health advocates have campaigned to the FDA for several years to ban Juul’s high-nicotine devices, which they blame for the recent rise in underage vaping. Juul, the market leader, was the most high-profile case that the FDA was handling.

Thursday’s ruling was part of a sweeping review by the FDA to bring scientific scrutiny to the e-cigarette industry. Ultimately the FDA did not determine that any vaping product it scrutinised was more likely to stop adults from smoking than to entice young people to start vaping. Some of the products that the FDA rejected were already being sold on the US market whilst others were only proposed by manufacturers.


Source: The Guardian, 9 September 2021
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** The Irish Department of Health yesterday (9th September) said that progress had been made towards making Ireland smokefree by 2025. The update came as Health Minister Stephen Donnelly and Minister of State for Public Health, Wellbeing and the National Drugs Strategy Frank Feighan welcomed the publication of Tobacco Free Ireland’s 2021 annual report.

Tobacco Free Ireland’s annual reports were first published in March 2015 and each year the Department of Health reports on their ongoing implementation. The latest report outlined what the Department called ‘’several key achievements’’ in meeting the target of a 5% smoking prevalence by 2025. These included introducing more education to young people, the launch of a new national marketing campaign, the completion of three comprehensive evidence reviews on e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, and a price increase of 50% on cigarette packets.


Source: Joe, 10 September 2021
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** Tobacco control researchers Caroline Wright (University of Bristol) and Andy Tan (University of Pennsylvania) discuss some of the harms to smokers of social media misinformation about e-cigarettes.

Wright and Tan express their concern at inaccurate information on social media which promotes the view that e-cigarettes are just as, or more harmful than, smoking for cigarette smokers. They say that this misinformation can deter smokers from quitting or reducing their smoking by switching to e-cigarettes.

Wright and Tan explain that they conducted the first study of its kind which found that cigarette smokers were less likely to purchase e-cigarettes after being exposed briefly to tweets falsely stating that e-cigarettes are more harmful than regular cigarettes. Their study involved 2400 US and UK adult cigarette smokers.

Wright and Tan identify the measures that regulators should take to minimise the adverse effects of such misinformation. First, public health agencies should do more to advise smokers of the evidence on e-cigarettes – that the short-term health risks from using them are considerably lower than the risks of smoking regular cigarettes. Related, they argue that physicians should be trained to correct any misconceptions their patients have developed about e-cigarettes.

Finally, they argue that policymakers and social media companies should ensure that all social media content associated with e-cigarettes is consistent with official health guidance and should work to ensure that accurate information is being promoted on their platforms.

Source: The Hill, 9 September 2021
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** Parliamentary Activity
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**
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**
PQ1: Oral Tobacco

Asked by Adam Afriyie, Windsor

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will undertake a comparative assessment of the scientific evidence on the impact on health of (a) the use of smokeless tobacco products, such as Swedish snus and (b) smoking as part of the Tobacco and Related Products review.

Answered by Jo Churchill, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care

A comparative assessment of the scientific evidence on the impact on health of the use of smokeless tobacco products, such as Swedish snus, and smoking, is out of the scope of the Post Implementation Review (PIR) of the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016. The purpose of the PIR is to provide feedback on the effectiveness of the legislation in achieving its objectives along with any unintended consequences that may have occurred.

Source: Hansard, 10 September 2021
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** PQ2: Electronic Cigarettes

Asked by Daisy Cooper, St Albans

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to implement the recommendation from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health to make the route to medicinal licensing fit-for-purpose to allow e-cigarettes to be authorised for NHS prescription.

Answered by Jo Churchill, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is responsible for the regulation of medicines in the United Kingdom. They continue to provide scientific and regulatory advice to applicants who wish to licence an e-cigarette medicinal product. The MHRA is in the process of updating their guidance which will further support potential applicants to meet the standards of quality and efficacy expected. The guidance will be published by the end of August.

Source: Hansard, 10 September 2021
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** Links of the Week
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**
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** NHS Digital has published its latest round of statistics on NHS stop smoking services in England from April 2020 to March 2021. The data shed light on the disruption to services caused by COVID-19. The data found that:

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** There has been a reduction in the number of smokers setting a quit date compared to 2019/20 (178,815 compared to 221,678 last year) but higher quitting success rates (59% compared to 51% last year).
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** There has been an increase in the proportion of under-18s who successfully quit smoking (self-reported) after setting a quit date (45% compared to 41% last year). Older smokers were still more likely to successfully quit than younger smokers.
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** There has been a notable increase in the number of pregnant women setting a quit date compared to 2019/20 (18,087 compared to 13,799 last year) and higher quit success rates (48% compared to 45% last year).
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** There has been a substantial increase in the number of people accessing telephone support compared to 2019/20 (106,023 compared to 15,651 last year), likely due to the shift to remote support during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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**
You can view the statistics below.
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View Data ([link removed])


**
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** New revelations from Panorama about the corrupt practices deployed by British American Tobacco, one of Britain’s biggest companies. Six years ago, Panorama revealed how BAT made secret payments to politicians and civil servants in East Africa. Now the programme shows how the multi-billion pound British company secretly paid almost 200 informants as part of a covert operation to damage its competitors in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Below is a link to where the programme will be uploaded after it is aired.
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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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