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** 28 June 2022
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** UK
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** £150 million investment to bolster NHS mental health services and better support people in crisis (#1)
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** Sajid Javid Interview: I still wonder if I could have stopped my brother’s suicide (#2)
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** Illicit cigarettes cost the UK £2.7 billion in 2021 (#3)
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** Glastonbury Festival introduces the Riot Rehab Bus to help smokers quit (#4)
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** Upcoming changes to the UK’s supply chain due diligence laws (#5)
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** International
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** US Study: Making smoking cessation a game increases abstinence among smokers not yet ready to quit (#6)
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** UK
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** In a statement to the House of Commons, Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced the publication of a draft Mental Health Bill and new funding to improve mental health support. People experiencing a mental health emergency will be able to access more care in the community, such as crisis houses and safe havens, and those detained under the Mental Health Act will benefit from landmark reforms which provide patients with more control over their care and treatment.

A £150 million investment over the next three years will bolster NHS mental health services, better support people in crisis outside of A&E and enhance patient safety in mental health units. These were all recommendations from Professor Sir Simon Wessely's independent review of the Mental Health Act in 2018.

The funding includes £7 million for specialised mental health ambulances across the country to reduce the use of general ambulance call outs for those experiencing a mental health crisis and prevent the inappropriate use of police vehicles as a way to take people to hospital. It is hoped that this will ease pressure on services, improve response times and outcomes for people in crisis which will help save lives, as well as ensuring patients experiencing a crisis are treated with dignity and respect.

The government’s newly published draft Mental Health Bill sets out wide-ranging reform to the Mental Health Act 1983 which aims to give patients more control over their care and treatment. The bill also aims to tackle racial disparities in mental health services, better meet the needs of people with a learning disability and autistic people and ensure appropriate care for people with serious mental illness within the criminal justice system.

The draft bill is now subject to pre-legislative scrutiny where a parliamentary select committee will examine the draft in detail before the government publishes a final version.

Source: News Medical, 27 June 2022
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** Speaking for the first time about his sibling’s death, the Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, reveals he now compulsively asks after others’ wellbeing. He recounts to Times Political Editor, Caroline Wheeler, the day he found out his older brother Tariq, the 51-year-old manager of a supermarket chain, was found dead in his hotel room by suicide.

Reflecting on his brother’s death, Javid said he suffered from survivor’s guilt: “It was a big shock because for me, for my brothers and the rest of the family there just weren’t any signs [...] We learned afterwards that he had a physical health problem that he hadn’t told anyone about . . . and if we had just known, if he had talked to us, perhaps we could have done something. So you think about that. Maybe I could have made a difference. And I guess I will never know the answer to that.”

Javid, whose parents immigrated to Britain from Pakistan in the 1960s, believes the stigma about mental health may have prevented his brother from seeking help. Javid said he has now changed the way he interacts with his friends and children. “Of course there are mental health professionals, but there is a role for all of us in this. If there is anyone thinking about what they can do to help, the number one thing is to talk to your loved ones and your friends and ask them how they are feeling. But don’t just ask them the question in a way that they will nod along to — ask them how they are really feeling and take your time.”

In April Javid called for evidence to inform the government’s ten-year mental health plan, which will include a suicide prevention plan. The government has already promised £5 million for voluntary and community suicide prevention services in 2021-22. It has also pledged to ensure that by 2023-24 anyone in the country can dial NHS 111 to contact a local mental health team for around-the-clock support.

“This has been a very personal experience for me but it’s by no means unique,” Javid said. “Sadly many thousands of people take their own lives each year and the numbers are going up [...] Obviously I want to find out what more we can do to prevent that and when it does happen to support people who are left behind. I feel that I am in a privileged position to do more about this because of my own experience and because I am the secretary of state for health.”

Source: The Times, 25 June 2022
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The amount of lost revenue caused by illicit cigarettes rose to £2.7 billion in 2021, according to a new report by KPMG, commissioned by the tobacco company Philip Morris International.

The report found that while overall cigarette consumption in the UK dropped by 0.4% to 30.2 billion cigarettes, contraband and counterfeit consumption increased by 230 million to 5.5 billion and represents 18.1% of the overall market. Overall, lost revenue caused by illicit products increased by £515 million compared to 2020, according to the report.

The North East and Yorkshire and the Humber were found to have the highest consumption of illicit products, with Poland cited as the main source of these products into the UK.

Source: Convenience Store, 27 June 2022

See also: Tobacco Tactics - Tobacco Industry’s complicity in illicit trade ([link removed])
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** Riot Lab, an e-cigarette producer and retailer, was on-hand at Glastonbury Festival over the weekend, aiming to support smokers to quit.

Festival-goers who smoke were offered Riot Labs products including e-liquids and the company’s disposable e-cigarette ‘Riot Bar’. Smokers could also speak to company staff about Riot Labs’ stop smoking programme.

Source: The Mirror, 26 June 2022
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** The Government plans to make changes to the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (MSA) due to reported inconsistency in organisations’ commitment to responsibilities under the legislation. The proposals will strengthen current requirements relating to transparency and the reporting process.

The MSA contains provisions relating to transparency in supply chains and requires the annual publication of a statement (or a link thereto) regarding slavery and human trafficking. The statement must be posted in a prominent place on the organisation’s website, and it must be signed by a director. This requirement applies to commercial organisations operating in the UK, regardless of their place of incorporation, with an annual global turnover of more than £36 million. At present, there are no financial penalties for non-compliance. The intention when the legislation was introduced was that enforcement would be achieved by the public scrutiny to which commercial organisations are exposed in publishing their statement. However, examples of legal action are rare. A challenge was brought against British American Tobacco and Imperial Brands on behalf of child labourers working on tobacco crops in Malawi, with proceedings believed to be still ongoing.

Certain content in the report will become compulsory under changes. This will include: reporting on the organisation’s relevant due diligence processes; steps that have been taken to assess and manage the risks of slavery and human trafficking in the supply chain; and the organisation’s effectiveness in ensuring that slavery and human trafficking is not taking place in its business or supply chains. In terms of reporting, a single reporting deadline is to be introduced, and organisations will be required to publish their statements on a newly launched registry.

Source: Mondaq, 27 June 2022
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** International
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** According to a study co-authored by University of Massachusetts Medical School researchers, smokers in a randomised clinical trial were nearly twice as likely to stop after participating in a technology-assisted abstinence game, compared with those who only received nicotine replacement lozenges to manage cravings. The study was published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

A total of 433 smokers who were not ready to quit were enrolled in the trial. Participants who received the abstinence game intervention made their first attempt at quitting sooner than the comparison group. And at the six-month follow-up, 18% of game intervention participants and 10% of comparison group participants obtained carbon monoxide level-verified smoking cessation, indicating they hadn't smoked in the previous seven days.

The TAB intervention was a three-week game experience. It included daily motivational text messaging, challenge quizzes assessing smoking behaviour, brief abstinence goal setting, choice of mobile health apps for cravings management and reward points for participation that determined the level of a gift card provided at the end of the study. Participants in the comparison group received daily text messages assessing the number of cigarettes smoked but did not receive the automated motivational replies to reinforce engagement and did not receive recognition points or participation rewards.

Principal investigator, Rajani S. Sadasivam, Ph.D., said smoking-cessation interventions have traditionally been targeted to people who indicated they wanted to quit, stating that the study aimed to make smoking cessation more palatable by framing it as a game: "There are not many interventions out there, so this adds to that literature of trying to help these people [...] This intervention can prepare them to quit, even if it's not immediate, in the long term. They understand about strategies they can use and they understand about nicotine replacement sampling and how to use it."

Source: Medical Xpress, 27 June 2022
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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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