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Writing in the BMJ, Professor Nicholas Hopkinson, professor of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London (ICL), debates Jørgen Vestbo, professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Manchester, Andrew Bush, professor of paediatrics and paediatric respirology at ICL, and Jonathan Grigg, professor of paediatric respiratory and environmental medicine at Queen Mary’s University London, about whether electronic cigarettes should be licensed as medicines.
Hopkinson argues that e-cigarettes should be licensed as medicines. He notes that e-cigarettes have a “substantially lower” health risk to tobacco cigarettes. He argues that medicinally licensing e-cigarettes is better than only offering e-cigarettes for consumer sale as e-cigarettes with a greater nicotine strength could be offered to help smokers quit through a process managed by a healthcare professional. Likewise medicinally licensed e-cigarettes could be offered alongside behavioural support to make their use in quitting more effective.
Hopkinson says that the strict regulatory process for licensing medicinal e-cigarettes would improve confidence amongst smokers and help to dispel some of the myths around the harms of vaping. That e-cigarettes could be offered alongside other medicines would mean, says Hopkinson, that vapers would be less likely to dual use vapes and cigarettes and more likely to quit.
Responding, Vestbo argues that e-cigarettes should not be licensed as medicines. He cites declining smoking rates, falling irrespective of the availability of e-cigarettes. They note that the evidence for the long-term safety of e-cigarettes is still uncertain and embryonic. They cite the propensity for vapers to keep vaping rather than quitting and the phenomenon of dual cigarette and e-cigarette use. They also note the risk that promoting e-cigarettes entails accepting addiction within society, even if the addictive product is much safer than an addiction to tobacco cigarettes.
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Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam is leaving his role as England’s deputy chief medical officer in order to take up a new academic role at the University of Nottingham. Van-Tam said that it had been the "greatest privilege" of his career to have served the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic whilst Boris Johnson thanked Van-Tam for his "extraordinary contribution to our country". Van-Tam will continue to work for the Government until the end of March before stepping down.
Van-Tam, alongside Sir Chris Whitty, was knighted in the Queen’s most recent New Years Honours list. Whitty thanked Van-Tam for his "steadfast support, advice, leadership and commitment" whilst Health Secretary Sajid Javid Mr Javid praised the "vital role he has played in our vaccination programme". Van-Tam, deputy chief medical officer for England since 2017, often appeared with Johnson at news briefings and caught the public eye with his colourful analogies for COVID-19.
Source: BBC News, 13 January 2022
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A judicial review led by the Good Law Project against the Government over its controversial allocation of the £4.8bn Levelling Up fund has been withdrawn by lawyers. The review had been instigated as the Project argued that the fund was being used by the Government to funnel money into constituencies where the Conservatives had the best chance of winning at the next election.
However, on Wednesday 12 January the Good Law Project announced that it would withdraw from the case due to legal advice received regarding the likelihood of success. The Project says that whilst they had been told by a senior source inside the Cabinet that “officials came under enormous pressure from ministers to favour Tory seats or winnable marginal seats; the criteria were fake and last-minute,” official Government documents since given to the Project were able to tell a different story, giving the judicial review a low chance of success.
However, Stephen Houghton, chair of the Special Interest Group of Municipal Authorities and the leader of Barnsley MBC, told LGC: "There's a lot of concern about how the levelling up fund has been allocated, or not allocated in places like ours. We've been told there is to be a second round of levelling up funding. The government has the chance to prove the doubters wrong by making sure that those places, like Barnsley and others, get fair access to that. They need to make sure that the money goes to the most deprived communities."
Source: LGC, 12 January 2022
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The American Cancer Society’s (ACS) latest annual report has shown that the cancer death rate for both men and women has fallen 32% from its peak in 1991 to 2018, meaning around 3.5 million fewer total deaths. The ACS attributed the reduction largely to the dramatic fall in smoking rates across this time. The data shows that the rate of decline has been accelerating in recent years. In the 1990s, the risk of contracting cancer dropped by about 1% every year, but between 2015 and 2019 this rate of reduction had doubled to around 2% a year. The ACS said that this quickening rate was due to more sophisticated prevention, screening, early diagnosis, and treatment.
The study also considered cancer survival rates. In 2004, only 21% of people diagnosed with lung cancer were still alive after three years but by 2018 this number had grown to 31%. However, the report also found major inequalities in survival rates with Black American women 41% more likely to die of breast cancer than White American women. Moreover, Native Americans and Alaska Natives have the highest liver cancer incidence of any major racial or ethnic group in the US with a risk that is more than double the risk amongst white Americans. The ACS attributed this gap to inequities in wealth, education, and overall standard of living.
Source: Daily Mail, 12 January 2022
See also: CA - Cancer Statistics, 2022
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John Ortved of the New York Times asks what to make of the fact that in 2020, for the first time in two decades, cigarette sales increased in the US. He investigates whether we are witnessing a potentially permanent change or are whether there more temporary factors at play in the increase.
Ortved speaks to various young people in the US for his article who report an anecdotal increase in the popularity of smoking. Ortved speaks to many young people who cite COVID-19 and smoking’s perception as a stress-reliever and social activity as their reason for starting to smoke. Moreover, the post-Covid night-time economy is more centred on outdoor entertainment, meaning more chances to smoke. Some young people Ortved speaks to say that a sense that life was meaningless and the future hopeless during the pandemic encouraged them to smoke. Other young people report wanting to rail against modern ‘wellness’ culture or the simple desire to rebel.
However, Ortved says that there is good reason to believe this trend will not continue. In 2020, Monitoring the Future, a pre-eminent study on youth smoking since 1975, recorded the first uptick in smoking rates in years, but when it released its newest findings in mid-December, they showed that cigarette use was down in every school grade. One young New Yorker sums up the overriding concerns with smoking: “It’s really expensive. They’re really evil corporations. I would like to live a healthier lifestyle than I do right now. But there’s a lot of things to worry about.”
Source: New York Times, 12 January 2022
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Reuters has fact checked a widely circulated meme that claims that a link between smoking and blood cots was only first mentioned by health authorities on cigarette pack warnings from 2022 in an effort to hide the negative health effects of COVID-19 vaccines and found that the claim is false.
The meme, first shared on Twitter, claims to show two similar tobacco health warnings, one from December 2021 and the other from January 2022. Where the former does not make mention of the risk of blood clots, the latter does. Reuters says that the meme is misleading as the quote attributed to the January 2022 pack is not new but can be found in 2011 legislation from Australia on health warnings. Moreover, the connection between smoking and blood clots is well-established.
Source: Reuters, 13 January 2022
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