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A new study led by the University of Bristol and published in Scientific Reports has found that women and girls whose grandfathers or great-grandfathers began to smoke before aged 13 tend to have more body fat. The research uses the “30-year-old Children of the 90s” study, a 30-year-old study in Bristol of three generations: grandchildren, their parents, and original participants.
The research suggests that exposure to substances like tobacco can lead to changes passed through the generations. Earlier research in 2014 had already shown that a father starting to smoke regularly before puberty would mean that his sons had more body fat than expected, but this is the first study extended to earlier generations and finding an effect also present in women.
The study looked at a cohort of over 14,000 participants. Lead author Professor Jean Golding said that the implication of the results for cross-generational relationships was exciting but noted that further research would be needed to understand why cross-generational changes like this occur.
Source: The Guardian, 21 January 2022
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A man from Leeds has been sentenced to a six-month custodial prison term for the involvement of his businesses in trading illicit tobacco. During visits by trading standards officers in March 2016, a total of 63,120 illicit cigarette sticks and 4.9kg of illicit hand-rolling tobacco were seized. The man originally appeared in Leeds Magistrates Court on 23 November 2016 and was sentenced to a 16-week custodial sentence suspended for 12 months. However, the man continued trading illicit tobacco meaning that the longer sentence was handed down on 18 January 2022.
During the second set of inspections after the initial sentence, officers found more than 5,291 illicit cigarette sticks and 1.1kg of hand-rolling tobacco. The seized tobacco did not bear statutory health warnings, had not had duty paid on it, and was not in the required standardised packaging. The loss of excise duty on the products was estimated to be around £35,000.
The illicit tobacco was being hidden in a roof void accessible through a hole in the wall behind a wardrobe. Councillor Pauleen Grahame, Member of the West Yorkshire Joint Services Committee, said: “We are committed to the fight against cheap and illicit tobacco. Illicit tobacco undermines the age and price restrictions placed on tobacco and also encourages people to continue smoking.”
Source: Yorkshire Evening Post, 20 January 2022
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An investigation by The Stray Ferret has found that North Yorkshire County Council invests over £20m in two of the world’s largest tobacco companies through its pension fund. The investigation, which involved a freedom of information request, found that the council pension fund holds £12.4m worth of shares in British American Tobacco and £8.9m in shares in Phillip Morris.
Matt Walker, a local NHS manager and Liberal Democrat campaigner, has called on the council to “live its values” and divest from its holdings in tobacco companies. However, Harrogate Borough Council councillor Jim Clark, who has sat on the Pension Fund’s committee of councillors since 2001, told The Stray Ferret that he “doesn’t think there is an issue” with the council pension fund profiting from tobacco companies whilst at the same time being in charge of public health.
Despite Government guidelines allowing for pension funds to be built around social, ethical, or environmental concerns, North Yorkshire’s responsible investment policy specifically states that “it will not implement an exclusionary policy against investment in any particular sector or company purely based on social, ethical or environmental reasons”.
Deborah Arnott, Chief Executive of ASH, said: “Local authority pension funds have a legal duty to get the best deal for their pensioners, but that doesn’t mean they have to invest in tobacco companies. Greater Manchester, the largest fund in the Local Government Pension Scheme, disinvested from tobacco stocks years ago, on the basis that the tobacco sector is relatively small as a proportion of world equity markets and the Fund’s investment managers’ views were that such exclusion was unlikely to have a material adverse impact on returns. What’s true for Greater Manchester’s pension fund is equally true for North Yorkshire.”
Source: The Stray Ferret, 21 January 2022
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A new study has found that schools are using “misleading and biased” information materials funded by the alcohol industry to educate pupils as young as nine about drinking. The research found that thousands of UK schools use lesson plans, factsheets, and films made by bodies with close ties to the drinks trade even though they “portray alcohol as a normal consumer product”.
The materials are intended to deter young people from underage drinking but downplay the harms drinking can cause and try to “blame-shift” responsibility for problems from manufacturers onto young people. The report said that the materials normalise alcohol, selectively present its harms, and misinform students about cancer by claiming that only heavy or excessive drinking raises the risk of developing cancer. The research was conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and published in the medical journal PLOS ONE. It analysed teaching materials put together by Drinkaware for Education, Smashed, and Talk About Alcohol between 2017 and 2019.
Drinkaware for Education is an initiative run by the industry-funded Drinkaware body, Smashed is a theatre-based education programme sponsored since 2005 by Diageo, the drinks firm that makes Guinness and Smironoff, whilst Talk About Alcohol is a programme run by the Alcohol Education Trust whose donors include bodies funded by the alcohol industry. Drinkaware has now removed the materials analysed by the researchers from its website but the Alcohol Education Trust and Smashed have continued to defend their programmes.
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A new report by Malaysia’s Datametrics Research & Information Centre (DARE) has found that vaping could reduce the smoking population in Malaysia to four million by 2025 by encouraging smokers to switch. The report also estimated that vaping could help reduce healthcare spending on treating smoking-related diseases, with savings of RM 1.3bn (around £228m) in 2025 alone.
DARE says it generated its data by using calculation models and studies by international bodies like Public Health England (now the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities) and Cochrane. The report, entitled Clearing the Smoke: Tobacco Harm Reduction, recommends that policymakers clearly differentiate tobacco products from less harmful products such as e-cigarettes. It calls on these products to be regulated to ensure high standards of safety, product information, and quality.
On regulations, the report recommends that regulation is risk-proportionate, recognising that e-cigarettes are a much less harmful alternative to tobacco products. In practice this could mean vapes including messages informing consumers about the value of switching. In September 2021 a perception study revealed that 80% of Malaysians believe that the adoption of tobacco harm reduction strategies such as the promotion of vaping will help smokers to quit, with 95% saying that the government must be involved in implementing such strategies in Malaysia. The Malaysian Government is set to introduce regulations for vaping products shortly, alongside the implementation of a new tobacco taxation framework announced at the 2022 Budget.
Source: New Strait Times, 21 January 2022
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The Department for Environmental Food & Rural Affairs’ (DEFRA) call for evidence on problematic plastic items closes on the 12th February 2022. The call for evidence specifically highlights tobacco filters as an area of interest, requesting views on their environmental impact and potential policy options to better inform the Government’s approach to addressing the plastic waste they create.
This follows announcements made last year that Ministers were exploring options for making tobacco companies pay for the litter created by cigarettes, possibly through an Extended Producer Responsibility scheme.
See also: DEFRA - Government explores next steps to clean up tobacco litter in England
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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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