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** 22 February 2022
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** UK
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** Scotland: Clydebank community groups encouraged to apply for stop smoking grant (#1)
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** Wales: More illegal tobacco seized by trading standards in Wrexham (#2)
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** Nick Forbes confirms exit as Newcastle City Council leader after Labour Party deselection (#3)
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** International
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** Study: Nicotine mandate could reduce smoking significantly (#4) #3
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** UK
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** Clydebank community groups and small charities are being invited to apply for a grant to help local residents improve their mental, physical and financial wellbeing.
The scheme will also provide a tailored support package by educating people about the harms caused by smoking, provided by Action on Smoking and Health Scotland (ASH Scotland).
Successful applicants will be given free training and resources to increase their staff and volunteers’ knowledge of smoking issues, access to free expert advice, assistance in creating an action plan to deliver their charter pledges and a contribution of £500 to cover salary, travel or material costs associated with the project engaging with people in their community.
Source: The Clyde Bank Post, 21 Feb 2022
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** Tens of thousands of illegal cigarettes were seized on Monday 14 February from businesses in the Welsh town of Wrexham following a series of disruption visits from Trading Standards Officers. This follows similar visits in the town last September, conducted as part of Operation Cece with funding from HMRC.
Trading Standards Officers from the Council’s Public Protection Service were supported by officers from North Wales Police as well as by specialist tobacco detection dogs. Illegal tobacco was found hidden in a variety of locations including in the boot of a nearby parked car and in a self-storage unit.
The Council’s Trading Standards and Licensing Lead, Roger Mapleson said, “Investigations into the seized product continue and those found responsible for dealing in illegal tobacco will be prosecuted.”
Source: The Leader, 21 Feb 2022
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** Newcastle will have a new council leader in May after Nick Forbes confirmed his time as leader is coming to an end. Forbes was dealt a stunning blow earlier this month when he was deselected by party members in his Arthur’s Hill ward, leaving him without a seat to contest in this May’s local elections and his political future in severe jeopardy.
He will remain Newcastle City Council leader, as well as vice chair of the Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Authority and senior vice chair of the Local Government Association, until his term in office comes to a close – but has asked for a new Labour group leader to be elected in the city before May, in order to give “clarity” to voters about the party’s direction.
The 48-year-old revealed his decision at a cabinet meeting, saying that withdrawing from May’s elections was the “one honourable choice available to me”. He said that representing another ward would feel like a “betrayal of the communities I have served” for his 22 years as a councillor and that he was “not prepared to ask for the Labour Party rule book to be exploited in my favour”, either by seeking election elsewhere or trying to overturn the Arthur’s Hill selection. He stated, “Exiting Newcastle politics like this brings me mixed emotions and a heavy heart”.
“I am disappointed that I will no longer be a voice for Newcastle at regional and national levels, or be able to represent the city directly to Government, but I am immensely proud of having been the first LGBT leader of this council - and its second longest serving leader.”
Source: The Chronicle Live, 21 Feb 2022
Editorial note: Cllr Nick Forbes is a longstanding supporter of tobacco control, and as leader of Newcastle City Council he was central to the development of the Local Government Declaration on Tobacco Control ([link removed]) . The Declaration is a statement of a council’s commitment to ensure tobacco control is part of mainstream public health work and has been signed by over 100 councils across the country since it was launched in May 2013.
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** International
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** Requiring cigarette manufacturers to significantly reduce the nicotine content of their products could dramatically reduce smoking rates in New Zealand, a new study published in The New Zealand Medical Journal suggests.
Mandating about 95 percent less nicotine in cigarettes could have a “plausible chance” of achieving the Government’s Smokefree 2025 goals, reports Professor Nick Wilson and colleagues from the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago, Wellington.
Wilson was relaxed about the anticipated uptick in vaping and illicit trade following such a mandate. Vaping is “substantially less harmful” than smoking and New Zealand’s remote location would offer some protection against cigarette smuggling, he noted.
Assuming a full ban on nicotine was implemented on March 1, 2023, Wilson and his colleagues predicted the smoking initiation among 18–24-year-olds would reduce by 75 percent due to the nonaddictive nature of the denicotinised tobacco. That would translate into an annual reduction of about 6,500 smokers. Among older established smokers, the researchers assume that 33 percent would quit each year in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
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** Source: Tobacco Reporter, 21 Feb 2022
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** See also: The New Zealand Medical Journal - Modelling the impacts of tobacco denicotinisation on achieving the Smokefree 2025 goal in Aotearoa New Zealand ([link removed])
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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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