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British American Tobacco’s (BAT) full-year profit and sales forecast released on Tuesday 7 December has shown stronger demand for its vaping, heated tobacco, and oral products in the first nine months of 2021 than in all of 2020. BAT said that an extra 3.6m customers had used its "new categories" products by the end of September, bringing their total users to 17.1 million.
BAT invested more than £346m in its new category products in the first half of the year and sales rose by more than 50%. BAT’s Vuse e-cigarettes gained 6.9% in market share in 2021 and its glo tobacco heating products gained 4.5%. BAT said it was still making a loss from its new categories but for the first time losses are narrowing, showing they might contribute to future profits.
BAT met its full-year forecast for revenue growth of more than 5% thanks partly to these products but largely due to its combustible tobacco business which is growing amidst high prices. BAT raised its outlook for global sales of combustible cigarettes from down 1.5% to "broadly flat" thanks to an increase in sales in Indonesia. However, sales of combustibles dipped in the US by 5.5% amidst industry decline. BAT’s shares, down 3% this year, rose by 1.75% to 2,761p in morning trading.
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John Naish of The Times explores the increasingly clear evidence on the relative safety of e-cigarettes compared to smoking. He notes that the UK now has the highest percentage of e-cigarette users in Europe, according to a report earlier this year in the journal BMC Public Health. Vape sales in the UK have risen above the £2.1bn mark. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) recently approved e-cigarettes for medicinal licensing on the NHS.
Naish explores some of the purported risks of e-cigarettes but concludes by citing British experts who say that the risk of vaping remains very small compared to tobacco. Dr June Raine, the chief executive of MHRA, says that the evidence is “clear” that e-cigarettes are less harmful than tobacco and can help people to stop smoking. Paul Aveyard, professor of behavioural medicine at Oxford University and co-ordinating editor of the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group, notes that “most people who start e-cigarettes will stop at some point.” He says that “the population of vapers is not going up and up. They seem to be able to stop smoking and stop vaping as well.”
Aveyard says that as a result it is likely that any e-cigarette prescription by doctors would “be limited to only about three months”. He also says that e-cigarettes would only be prescribed alongside behavioural support to help patients quit smoking and nicotine altogether. The chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Professor Martin Marshall, agrees, saying that “vaping should only be seen as a way to give up smoking, with the intention to then give up vaping”.
Source: The Times, 7 December 2021
See also: The Conversation - Does vaping really damage DNA and increase the risk of cancer?
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Northern Ireland Health Minister Robin Swann has welcomed the support of members of the Northern Ireland Assembly for plans to ban smoking in private vehicles when children are present and to prevent the sale of nicotine inhaling products such as e-cigarettes to those aged under 18.
Under the new vehicle proposals, legislation banning smoking on public transport and work vehicles used by more than one person would be extended to private vehicles where children are present, where there is more than one person in the vehicle, and where the vehicle is enclosed. It will also be an offence for a driver to fail to prevent smoking in a smokefree private vehicle.
Under the new nicotine inhaling products proposals, from February 1 2022 it will be an offence to sell nicotine inhaling products to children and to purchase or attempt to purchase such products on their behalf. These offences will come to mirror current offences relating to tobacco sales.
Source: Belfast Live, 6 December 2021
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A Hull woman who quit cigarettes after her friend was diagnosed with lung cancer is fronting a new NHS campaign to encourage more smokers to quit in Hull. Jan McKinley is urging other Hull residents to quit as Hull’s health professionals launch their ‘Don’t Quit Quitting’ campaign, saying that her biggest incentive to quit has been being able to "run around with the children".
The campaign has released a video showing Hull residents enjoying social and physical activities made easier by living smokefree. Jan says that she used to put a sticker over the graphic health warnings on packets of cigarettes to avoid them but was unable to avoid the fact that she could not run around with her children or find the energy to go places and do things. She also cites the financial gain of quitting – saying "turning it in all into a positive opportunity is the best way to go.”
Hull has one of the highest rates of adult smokers in the UK, with nearly a quarter (22.2%) of adult residents regularly smoking, according to 2019 figures from the Office of National Statistics. The new campaign will be promoted through the media and through healthcare settings for the remainder of the year and throughout 2022 in support of Hull’s health and wellbeing strategy.
Source: Hull Daily Mail, 6 December 2021
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LGC understands that there is growing consensus that the soon-to-be-announced local government finance settlement will be for one year rather than three years. The Local Government Association had been pushing for a three-year settlement to give councils greater long-term certainty in budget planning following the comprehensive three-year spending review in October.
However, LGC says that some figures in the sector would prefer a one-year settlement given the current high rates of inflation and the greater flexibility it would allow in lobbying the Government for more money in the following years, which is particularly important as the spending review has already indicated that a less generous settlement will be available from 2023-34 onwards.
A source close to the sector believes that the government will provide indicative figures for 2023-24 and 2024-25 at the same time as announcing next year’s local government spending, which would give scope to set future allocations depending on the outcome of a potential fair funding review and business rates reforms which are expected to take place soon. Another source said that it was likely that a three-year settlement would have meant little anyway as the Government could always call an emergency budget and cut the promised local government funding regardless.
Source: LGC, 6 December
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