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Health Secretary Sajid Javid is said to be set to promote plans to offer e-cigarettes on the NHS to help level up health by tackling smoking. Last year the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency updated its guidance to allow e-cigarette companies to apply for a license for the prescription of their products on the NHS to smokers trying to quit. Javid is said to be keen on the idea and plans to include it in the Government’s upcoming levelling-up health white paper due in the spring. A Whitehall insider told The Sun: “Mr Javid has made it clear he wants to level up health — tackling smoking is part of that. The MHRA opened the door to prescribing vapes.”
Source: The Sun, 18 January
Editorial note: The Sun article stated that “smokers would be prescribed e-cigarettes on the NHS in months” and that “the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency approved the gadgets [e-cigarettes] late last year”. The MHRA did not approve the products, it encouraged applications for marketing authorisations for electronic cigarettes and other inhaled nicotine-containing products as medicines. However, licences will only be awarded to products which meet standards of quality, safety and efficacy as defined under medicines regulations.
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An investigation by VICE has uncovered the human cost of the illicit tobacco trade in the UK, finding that the gangs dominating the trade employ refugees and asylum seekers as modern day slaves. The investigation found that men are paid as little as £20 a day and are shunted around the country from shop to shop in order to help shopkeepers provide illicit tobacco.
The investigation spoke to trading standards officers who say they are busting more illegal tobacco outfits than ever before, particularly those which use shops as a front for selling illicit tobacco in the most deprived parts of the UK amidst growing numbers of empty shops on highstreets. Shops increasingly contain sophisticated devices for concealing secret rooms or compartments.
Workers are often housed in rooms on the premises not fit for purpose, with dirty small mattresses and flaking damp walls. A big issue is that workers do not want to engage with the authorities, fearing for their status in the UK or that relatives will have to pay off debts to traffickers. Often they do not have a mobile phone, a house key, or money, and do not know where they live.
Phil Mykytiuk, trading standards manager at Bolton Council, says that the UK’s “mismanaged asylum system” is at least partly to blame, as youths who arrive in the UK as unaccompanied asylum-seekers are groomed for these roles as they earn just £39.63 per week in asylum seekers allowance. Another issue is that tobacco offences can take months to prosecute and rarely carry a prison sentence, with HMRC rather than the National Crime Agency taking the lead on tobacco.
At street level, trading standards tobacco offences can take months to prosecute and rarely carry the bite of a prison sentence. Most offenders, if they can be located by the time a case lands in court, receive a fine or community order. Meanwhile, shops reopen with a new tenant in situ. The National Crime Agency said that while it supports partner agencies on tobacco enforcement, its focus is on prohibited commodities like drugs and firearms, with HMRC taking the lead on tobacco.
Source: VICE, 17 January 2022
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A new council report has highlighted the need to tackle smoking in County Durham, showing that an extra £13.39m is spent on social care in County Durham because of smoking. The report found that 14.3% of people in the county smoke, or 62,000 people, higher than regional and national averages. The County Durham Tobacco Control Alliance aims to reduce smoking rates to 5%, 40,100 fewer smokers, or less by 2025.
The report estimated that 17,000 people either do not receive care for illnesses attributable to smoking or receive unpaid care from friends and family and it would cost more than £158m a year to provide paid care for them. The report noted that a new Tobacco Control Plan is due next year.
Durham County Council’s director of public health Amanda Healy told councillors that while there had been a lot of excellent work over many years: “We really do need to reinvigorate our approach to tobacco control. I think it’s time to put us back on the front foot. We’re still way behind some other parts of the country so a really focused approach to that work will be really, really welcome.”
The council report noted that the biggest contributor to the relatively high smoking prevalence in County Durham is persistently high smoking rates in routine and manual workers. At a meeting of the council’s health and wellbeing board, councillors agreed to prioritise this issue as well as to reduce smoking rates in pregnant women amidst a slower fall in smoking rates amongst this group than the national average. The council is also recruiting new stop smoking advisors.
Source: The Northern Echo, 19 January 2022
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A researcher at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has told councils that inner London boroughs and shire districts are likely to lose out from the Government’s fair funding review (FFR). The comments made by IFS associate director David Phillips at the Local Government Association finance conference on 13 January echo those given to LGC last month (December 2021) by finance experts who also suggested that London boroughs and some counties could lose out.
Phillips warned London boroughs to be “careful to avoid building their medium-term plans on existing or next year’s funding levels” as much of the funding London boroughs receive this year is from a one-off grant. On the shires, Phillips said that resetting business rates baselines was likely to be detrimental. Phillips questioned how protection for funding losers would be built into the system but noted that “completion of the [FFR] in particular is vital, despite the challenges it will pose”.
The government began to draw up detailed formulae for the FFR in 2019, but this was paused due to COVID-19. The government plans to consult on the allocation of funding to local government this spring. Though Local Government minister Kemi Badenoch has acknowledged that much of the data used for funding allocation is outdated, Phillips says that formulas must also change.
Nichola Morton, the LGA’s head of local government finance, echoed this point and said the Government must be clear on whether the FFR includes formulae. She said the government must “set out a road map for local government” of its plans and must “engage really strongly with local government on all of those things and be as transparent as possible and take on board feedback.”
Source: LGC, 14 January 2022
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The Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management in Queensland Australia has ruled in favour of a non-smoker in a 'smokedrift' case, a first-of-its-kind ruling in a 'smokedrift' case. The Office ruled in favour of a resident living on the ninth floor of a resort in Surfers Paradise who complained about smoke drifting into her apartment and affecting her health from a resident who was said to smoke on her eighth-floor balcony every 20 to 40 minutes every day. The ruling could now pave the way for smoking on balconies in Australia to be banned.
In its ruling the Office adjudicator determined that tobacco was a hazard to the upstairs tenant and ordered that the eighth-floor resident must no longer smoke tobacco-based products on her private balcony. It ordered the resident to take steps to ensure that no other tenant is affected by her smoking indoors. Kristi Kinast, president of the Strata Community Association of Queensland, said the extraordinary ruling could set a precedent for other unit owners and encourage them to argue that other types of smoking or smoking at other frequencies was also a health hazard.
Source: Daily Mail, 19 January 2022
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The Chairwoman of the Israeli Knesset (legislative body) Health Committee Idit Silman has pledged at a meeting of the Health Committee to pass a series of new anti-smoking bills that would raise the minimum smoking age to 21, require police to enforce anti-smoking laws, and change the status of apartment balconies to prevent neighbours from inhaling secondhand smoke.
Speaking at the meeting, Dr. Efrat Aflalo of the Health Ministry noted that around 8,000 Israelis die from smoking each year, with 800 dying because of exposure to secondhand smoke. On balconies, Aflalo said: "Smoking is not a neutral activity, it has grave implications for people around you. In the same way that we limit the kind of noise somebody can make from their house […] if you go out on your balcony, and the smoke wafts up to your neighbours, then that is unacceptable.”
Source: Israel Hayom, 17 January 2022
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