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** 20 October 2021
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** UK
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** 'Smoking kills' could be printed on every cigarette under new proposals (#1)
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** Vectura chiefs sold £6m of shares in Philip Morris deal (#2)
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** E-cig users more likely to relapse than those who quit unaided (but are also more likely to requit - see editorial note) (#3)
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** Sniffer dogs help seize thousands of illegal cigarettes from Darlington shops (#4)
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** International
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** Corporate influence linked to slow implementation of public health policies globally (#5)
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** US: Cigarette sales during the COVID-19 pandemic were 14% higher than past years (#6)
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** UK
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** MPs are proposing a raft of new measures aimed at encouraging more people to quit smoking, including printed health warnings such as “smoking kills” on individual cigarette sticks, information messages included inside cigarette packets, a “polluter pays” levy on tobacco company profits to pay for stop smoking activities, and raising the age of sale for buying cigarettes from 18 to 21.

MPs have made the proposals via an amendment to the health and care bill going through parliament, submitted by Labour MP Mary Foy and endorsed by Conservative MP Bob Blackman, shadow health secretary Jonathon Ashworth, and shadow justice secretary Alex Cunningham. Foy’s amendments also include measures to stop e-cigarette makers from using tactics that might entice children to try them, such as sweet flavours and cartoon characters, and to make it illegal to give e-cigarettes away for free as sampler products, as some manufacturers have done.

Speaking about the proposal for printed health warnings, Foy said: “We know that cigarettes are cancer sticks and kill half the people who use them. So, I hope that health warnings on cigarettes would deter people from being tempted to smoke in the first place, especially young people. I hope it would encourage some smokers to give up because if they are putting that in their mouth and seeing that message on cigarettes every time they smoke, I hope it would have the desired effect.”

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of ASH, added: “Warnings on cigarettes were suggested over 40 years ago by then health minister George Young. The tobacco companies, with breathtaking hypocrisy, protested that the ink would be toxic to smokers. The truth is cigarette stick warnings are toxic to big tobacco and this is an idea whose time has come.”

Of the polluter pays levy, Bob Blackman, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health, said: “As the chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty says, big tobacco is an industry which ‘kills for profit’. Profits are obscenely high, two to three times greater than companies selling consumer necessities like food and drink. Our ‘polluter pays’ levy is both necessary and justified.”

Source: The Guardian, 20 October 2021
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** The two most senior Vectura executives offloaded shares worth more than £6 million as part of the sale of the respiratory drugs firm to Philip Morris International (PMI), one of the world’s largest tobacco firms. Stock market disclosures show that Will Downie, Vectura’s chief executive since 2019, sold shares worth £2.3 million whilst Paul Fry, chief financial officer, sold shares worth £3.8 million. The shares mostly related to incentive and bonus schemes and were sold late last month.

PMI controlled 96.9% of Vectura’s shares by the end of September after its £1 billion takeover. PMI confirmed yesterday (October 19), with its third-quarter trading update to Wall Street, that Vectura had been delisted from the London stock market. PMI yesterday posted pre-tax profits up 7.1% to almost $3.3 billion (£2.4 billion) and 9.1% higher net revenues at $8.1 billion (£5.9 billion).
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Source: The Times, 20 October 2021
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** New research from the University of California, San Diego has found that people who use e-cigarettes to quit smoking are marginally less likely to have quit smoking after one year than those who quit unaided. The research found that e-cigarette users are 42% likely to have quit smoking a year later versus a 50% likelihood at the same point for those who quit unaided.

The study was published in the journal JAMA Network Open using data from the annual Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health survey conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Researchers used data from 2013 and 2017 with participants who took part in sequential surveys. They found that 9.4% of smokers who reported cigarette usage in the first annual survey had quit a year on, with 62.9% quitting entirely and 37.1% using a new tobacco product.

Nearly one quarter of this group had taken up e-cigarettes to aid quitting and one in five reported using their device every day. The survey also considered the use of other tobacco-based alternatives and found little difference between them in ability to prevent a person from relapsing. Legislators in the FDA are currently deciding which e-cigarettes to approve for the US market amidst pressure from some US legislators to ban flavoured e-cigarette devices across the country.

Source: Daily Mail, 19 October 2021

Editorial Note:

The study states that, “While respondents who switched to e-cigarettes were more likely to relapse by follow-up 2, they were also more likely to requit for at least 3 months than those who did not use tobacco (17.0%; 95%CI, 12.4%-21.6%vs 10.4%; 95%CI, 8.0%-12.9%).” The Mail is only presenting part of the story: while smokers who use e-cigarettes may be more likely to relapse, they are also more likely to requit and to be abstinent for 3 months at follow up than those who quit unaided. The lesson to be learned is that smokers can benefit from using e-cigarettes in their quit attempts, not that it will make it more likely that they will fail.
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** Thousands of cigarettes and almost seven kilos of tobacco have been seized from shops in Darlington as part of a national trading standards initiative in partnership with HMRC named Operation CeCe. Darlington’s trading standards and Durham Police joined forces with two tobacco detection dogs, Yoyo and Cooper, for searches on eight shops across Darlington on Tuesday 10 October. They seized a total of 24,200 cigarettes and 6.65 kilos of hand rolling tobacco.

The team visited one shop in which tobacco products were concealed in a chimney breast and by a shelving unit with an electronic opening and closing mechanism. Other shops had light fittings on magnets which when lowered revealed a ceiling void used to store the illegal goods. Councillor Jonathan Dulston, deputy leader of Darlington Borough Council, said: “The sale of these products directly funds organised crime, so it’s not possible to overstate the importance of this kind of work."
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Source: ITV, 19 October 2021
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** International
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** A new study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, published in the journal Lancet Global Health, has found that the implementation of the WHO’s recommended public health policies on tobacco, alcohol, and unhealthy foods has been slow globally. The study found particularly poor implementation in poorer and less democratic countries where corporations have more influence.

The study examined to what extent WHO member states had implemented the 2013 so-called ‘Best Buy’ policies endorsed by 194 member states to combat non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic lung disease. The list includes 19 interventions with a particular focus on tackling tobacco, alcohol, and unhealthy foods. The analysis also considered whether national level indicators in endorsing countries correlated with the degree of implementation. The analysis is based on three so-called NCD progress monitor reports.

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** The researchers found that on average only a third of the public health policies endorsed had been fully implemented in 2020. When awarding a half-point for partially implemented policies, the average implementation score was 47% in 2020, up from 45.9% in 2017 and 39% in 2015. Around two-thirds of countries had not implemented WHO recommended restrictions on marketing of unhealthy food to children in 2020 whilst implementation of measures targeting alcohol use, including restrictions on sales and advertising, eased between 2015 and 2020. Measures targeting tobacco fared marginally better in the study. The most widely implemented interventions were clinical guidelines and national action plans and targets to combat NCDs.
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Progress was especially slow in low-income countries and less democratic countries, with Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Sierra Leone bottom of the list. The researchers measured the impact of corporate political influence and found that the more influence corporations had in a country the lower the degree of implementation of preventive public health measures. The researchers did find a significant positive correlation between the proportion of deaths due to NCDs and policy implementation, highlighting a greater urgency to act when the burden of NCDs grows.
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Source: Medical Xpress, 19 October 2021
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A new study from the American Cancer Society has found that sales of cigarettes in the US were 14% higher during the COVID-19 pandemic than in previous years. Using data from tobacco companies, researchers found that cigarette sales were up 14% in March 2020 versus predictions using data from the previous decade, meaning an extra 0.34 packs a day per American adult.

Cigarette sales had been in a long-term decline prior to the COVID-19 pandemic but lockdowns saw more people taking up smoking due to boredom, stress, and other mental health impacts. The study, published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, used federal data from major tobacco companies. Researchers developed a model to predict what sales in 2020 would have looked like if the pandemic had not occurred. Its findings align with other such studies.

Source: Business Fast, 19 October 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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