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** 20 September 2021
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** UK
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** Tobacco detection dog uncovers illegal tobacco across multiple locations (#1)
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** Pharma events bar Vectura after its takeover by Philip Morris (#2)
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** Opinion: Big Tobacco's takeover of Vectura shows the holes on our Companies Act (#3)
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** Ex-Bank economist picked to lead levelling up taskforce (#4)
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** International
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** Ireland: Research reveals increases in smoking and vaping in Irish teens (#5)
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** Ireland: Make Leinster House tobacco-free and lead by example, politicians told (#6)
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** UK
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** The Sunday People reveals details of the recent raid by trading standards, police officers and tobacco detection dog on a shop in Derbyshire which seized illicit cigarettes worth nearly £10,000.

Detection dog Cooper scanned the rooms and discovered a metal cage within the shop buried three feet deep inside a cavity lined with thick plywood, controlled by a hydraulic mechanism, which took 20 minutes of hacking to prise open.

Dog-handler Stuart Phillips says that a person or group is making and fitting identical hides in shops across the country. Inside the hide were almost 11,000 cigarettes and 131 pouches of tobacco. In an upstairs flat, the team discovered the human cost of the trade, with squalid living conditions described by officers as a form of modern-day slavery.

Phillips and his dog Cooper have already uncovered three million cigarettes and £250,000 in cash this year alone and have received death threats, with a £25,000 bounty on the head of Philips’ most prolific detection dog Scamp. Official figures say as much as a third – 3,500 tonnes – of hand-rolling tobacco and 2.5 billion cigarettes smoked in the UK in 2018-19 was illegal.

Whilst the industry often states that illicit cigarettes contain higher levels of harmful toxins than legal cigarettes, Deborah Arnott, chief executive of ASH, says that: “It’s a line still trotted out by the tobacco industry that counterfeit fags are more deadly. Whatever they smoke, smokers are inhaling over 90 toxic substances, causing 16 different types of cancer, heart disease and respiratory failure. The danger of fake cigarettes is not that they’re more likely to kill you, but because their lower prices make it harder to quit.”

Source: Mirror, 18 September 2021
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Pharmaceutical industry conferences have begun barring Vectura after Philip Morris International (PMI) acquired the respiratory drugs company last week in a £1.1 billion takeover. The Drug Delivery to the Lungs conference (DDL), billed as the premier conference and industry exhibition dedicated to pulmonary and nasal drug delivery, has terminated Vectura’s sponsorship and the company’s representative has stood down from its committee.

In a memo for associates seen by The Times, the organisers made clear: “we do not wish to be associated with PMI and the tobacco industry.” Gary Pitcairn, chairman of the conference, said: “We have cut ties completely, otherwise we will lose the trust of the scientific/clinical community that work so hard to develop better inhaled medicines for patients. There is no grey zone here: Vectura cannot be part of our future while they are part of the tobacco industry.”

The conference is scheduled for December and sponsors include AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline. Vectura has also been barred from an Oxford Global event this week (beginning 20th September) on inhaled drug delivery in London after other speakers threatened to withdraw. Nick Hopkinson, professor of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London and chairman of ASH, said that other conferences would cut ties and Vectura’s employees would probably be considering their future at the company.

Source: The Times, 20 September 2021
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Chris Turner, Campaign Director for the Better Business Act, argues that the Vectura takeover shows that the Companies Act should be reformed to require businesses to align shareholder interests with those of wider society and the environment when they are being taken over.

Turner says that companies have a duty to return money to shareholders but argues that this is self-defeating when it ''becomes single minded’’, given the damage done by deals like the Vectura one to the business overall. But Turner says that it is a ''consequence of the existing system’’ with its narrow ideas of profit and the responsibility of corporations that directors feel duty-bound to sell a company to the highest bidder even when they fear damage to customers, employees, and the public.

Turner argues that there is another way. He says that over 700 businesses, from local businesses to high-street brands, are demanding changes to the Companies Act to require directors to take a more holistic view. They back The Better Business Act, which would reform Section 172 of the Companies Act so that directors are required to align shareholder interests with wider society and the environment. According to polling undertaken by the Institute of Directors, more than half of directors themselves believe that the Companies Act focuses too much on shareholders and not enough on other stakeholders. Turner cites a survey showing that 72% of the UK public think that businesses should have a legal responsibility to people and the planet alongside shareholders.

Turner concludes that now is the time for the Government to amend existing company law, with the Government intending to reform corporate governance in the next Parliamentary session.

Source: City AM, 17 September 2021
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Andy Hildane, a former Bank of England chief economist, has been appointed on Sunday 19th September 2021 as the head of the Government’s levelling up taskforce. Hildane described his new task as “one of the signature challenges of our time”. Haldane said that addressing regional disparities had been a “personal passion” in his career and he was looking forward to working with the private and voluntary sectors “to design and deliver an economy that works for every part of the UK”. Haldane will be based in the Cabinet Office, at permanent secretary level, and will report jointly to the prime minister and to new Local Government minister Michael Gove.

The surprise appointment, which was presented as highly significant by ministers, came alongside confirmation that what was the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will be renamed the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Haldane, born in Yorkshire and attending university in Sheffield, had a reputation as an independent thinker during his time at the Bank of England. In 2014 he was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, partly for his willingness to blame bankers for their role in triggering the financial crash. Haldane said that Occupy Wall Street protesters’ analysis of the crash was essentially right.

Earlier this year the Industrial Strategy Council, an independent advisory body which Haldane chaired, published a report that said that “levelling up requires time and cross-party consensus on key policies”. The research, which looked at factors linking four international cases where levelling up has been successful, said one common feature was that “economic policy direction has remained constant regardless of local or national election results”. The report also said that “sustained and large-scale public investment” was key in these cases.

Source: The Guardian, 19 September 2021
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** International
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** A new study led by the TobaccoFree Research Institute in Ireland has found that rates of smoking amongst teenage boys in Ireland are increasing for the first time in 25 years. The study, published in the journal ERJ Open Research, also shows that rates of vaping amongst teenagers have risen in the last four years and finds that teenagers who use e-cigarettes are also likely to smoke.

The researchers examined data on Irish teenagers from the European School Survey Project of Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD), which surveyed around 100,000 15 to 16-year-olds in 35 European countries. The 2019 survey involved 1,949 Irish teenagers. Results from the 2019 survey showed that 16.2% of Irish teenage boys were smokers, compared to 13.1% in 2015, and found that 12.8% of Irish teenage girls were smokers compared to 13.1% in 2015.

The 2019 survey found that 37% of Irish teenagers said that they had used e-cigarettes at some point, up from 23% in 2015, whilst 18.1% said that they were currently using e-cigarettes in 2019 versus 10.1% in 2015. The data also found that teenagers who said that they had used e-cigarettes at some point or were currently using them were also 50% more likely to smoke. Ireland was the only country to include questions on e-cigarette use in the 2015 ESPAD survey.

Professor Clancy, a researcher behind the study, said that previous research had suggested that the Irish Government’s target for 5% smoking prevalence by 2025 could be achieved for teenagers, but that this research had shown that this was ''very unlikely’’.
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** Source: Mirage News, 20 September 2021

See also: ERJ - Increased smoking and e-cigarette use among Irish teenagers: A new threat to Tobacco Free Ireland 2025 ([link removed])
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The Houses of the Oireachtas Commission has asked its administrative service to prepare a report on making the Irish parliament’s grounds tobacco-free. The Commission, a committee of politicians and officials, has made the recommendation following pressure from public health groups.

The Irish Heart Foundation said politicians needed to lead by example to ensure the achievement of the national Tobacco-Free Ireland Policy, which aims to reduce smoking prevalence to 5% by 2025. Chris Macey, the foundation’s head of advocacy, said that progress towards the 5% goal seemed to be “flat-lining”. Many hospital and university campuses and the Department of Health were already tobacco free, Macey said.

A motion to make the Leinster House grounds tobacco free was previously brought to the joint Oireachtas committee on health in 2012 by John Crown, a consultant oncologist and Independent senator at the time, but the committee decided not to vote on the proposal. Now Colm Burke, Fine Gael health spokesman, said there is “no doubt” that the government should be moving towards making the parliamentary grounds tobacco-free. The Tobacco-Free Ireland Policy recommends legislation to promote tobacco free grounds for “all health care, governmental and sporting facilities in consultation with key stakeholders”.

Source: The Times, 20 September 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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