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** 29 March 2022
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** UK
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Comment: Professor Nick Hopkinson on medicinal licensing of e-cigarettes (#1)
** Marmot calls for health disparities white paper to be renamed (#2)
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** International
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** Walmart removes cigarettes from stores 'to protect minors' (#3)
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** Thailand's ban on e-cigarettes upheld by tobacco committee (#4)
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** UK
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Nicholas S Hopkinson, Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Imperial College and Chair of Action on Smoking and Health, responds to Professor Sarah Brown et al.’s criticism in The Lancet of the MHRA’s decision to support the process to develop the medicinal licensing of e-cigarettes.
Hopkinson says that Brown and colleagues overlook a wealth of evidence suggesting that the use of e-cigarettes is substantially less harmful than smoking, and a Cochrane review and actual use data showing that e-cigarettes can be an effective quitting aid for smokers. He critiques the evidence used by Brown and colleagues for their claim that e-cigarettes have immediate substantial toxic effects, finding that Brown et al. cite two case reports which involve vaping unregulated illicit cannabis products, very different from medicinal e-cigarettes which will have to gain medicinal licensing.
He further notes that causal links between vaping and acute respiratory illness are in any case hard to establish since most people who start vaping also have a smoking history. Invoking rare cases when a person who vapes experiences a respiratory illness is therefore not justifiable, says Hopkinson. He finishes by saying that the real concern with e-cigarettes is their appropriate regulation, safety, ensuring they are not marketed to children, and ensuring that the tobacco industry cannot use them to undermine other tobacco control measures. Moreover, e-cigarettes are only one part of the solution: Hopkinson argues that we must also advocate for a range of measures including a polluter-pays levy on the tobacco industry, dissuasive cigarettes, and raising the minimum age of sale from 18 to 21 years in the UK.
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Source: The Lancet, 28 March 2022
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Read Article ([link removed](22)00334-8/fulltext#%20)
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** Leading public health expert Professor Michael Marmot wants the Government to rename the health disparities white paper to include “inequalities” in the title, adding that he has not been consulted about the paper’s contents. Marmot, professor of epidemiology and public health at UCL, says that he hopes the paper will deal with the social determinants of health rather than narrowly defining prevention. Marmot also hopes it will recognise that tackling health-related inequalities is a matter for the whole of Government and not just the Department of Health and Social Care.
Marmot says that the UK had been on the back foot in terms of public health even before the pandemic began, with a population that he says was not particularly healthy. “We were ill-prepared, and we weren’t very healthy coming into the pandemic. The reduction in spending on public services needs to be reversed. It’s not just 'no more austerity', we need to restore the ability of local government to act and deal with the fact that we weren’t very healthy," Marmot said.
Marmot also criticised Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s spring statement, highlighting what he felt was a lack of support for bringing households out of poverty. “It doesn’t appear that he did much for poor households,” said Marmot. “Well, he did a bit. He did increase the number of households that are going to be in poverty, but not very much to relieve the cost-of-living problems.”
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Source: LGC, 24 March 2022
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** International
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** American grocery giant Walmart has started to remove cigarettes from some American shops as executives considers its future as a seller of tobacco products. The chain has not disclosed how many outlets will not sell tobacco products, but it has already pulled cigarettes from select outlets.
Walmart has not said it is halting the sale of tobacco altogether but is looking at ways it can utilize space in certain stores more efficiently. Walmart is the world’s biggest retailer by sales, generating revenue of $572.8bn (£437.5bn) last year, and has 10,500 stores and 2.3 million staff across 24 countries.
Public health campaigners have long argued that retailers should stop selling tobacco products. A few large chains in the US have already moved, with CVS, the pharmacy business, halting all tobacco sales and Target, the discount department chain, doing so in 1996. Walmart is said to have been weighing up how to minimize the sale of tobacco without enforcing an outright ban.
Following the news, shares in leading tobacco manufacturers came under pressure. Shares in British American Tobacco erased earlier gains to trade flat at £32.99 in London. Altria Group declined 2.9% to $52.03 (£39.73) in New York and shares in Walmart rose 1.8%.
Source: The Times, 28 March 2022
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Read Article ([link removed])
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** Members of Thailand’s National Tobacco Products Control Committee have decided to uphold a ban on the import and sale of e-cigarettes (which they classify as a tobacco product), according to Thailand’s Public Health Ministry permanent secretary Kiattiphum Wongrajit.
Source: The Nation Thailand, 29 March 2022
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