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Thérèse Coffey to drop smoking action plan, insiders say
Ministers are expected to break a promise to announce an action plan to tackle smoking, in their latest controversial U-turn on public health. The government had committed several times to publish a tobacco control plan “later this year”. However, health secretary, Thérèse Coffey, does not intend to honour that promise, according to Whitehall officials with knowledge of her intentions.
Coffey, who is also the deputy prime minister, smokes and has previously accepted hospitality from the tobacco industry. Since becoming an MP in 2010 she has voted in the Commons against an array of measures to restrict smoking, including the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces, the outlawing of smoking in cars containing children, and the implementation of plain packs for tobacco products.
Liz Truss, the prime minister, a close friend of Coffey’s, is also a longstanding sceptic of tobacco control who has often opposed related legislation. She has also appointed former tobacco lobbyists as part of her team of Downing Street advisers.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said it was “inaccurate” to suggest that the tobacco control plan was being dropped, but did not say if or when it would publish it. There is speculation that proposals that were due to feature in the plan may yet appear in some other form, possibly in the 10-year cancer plan that ministers do intend to publish.
Insiders also say there is “no chance” that recommendations to reduce smoking that the ex-Barnardo’s chief executive Dr Javed Khan made in a government-commissioned review will ever be acted on. They included raising the legal age of buying tobacco by a year every year and putting an extra £125m into efforts to encourage smokers to quit, possibly by imposing a new “polluter pays” levy on tobacco firms and requiring sellers of tobacco products to have a licence. Khan made clear in his review, published in June, that ministers needed to accelerate the reduction in smoking by 40% if they were to hit the 2030 target.
Labour and public health campaigners voiced alarm at the potential U-turn over the tobacco control plan. It follows a Treasury-ordered review of measures to tackle obesity, and Coffey scrapping Javid’s promised white paper on health inequalities.
Deborah Arnott, the chief executive of ASH, said: “To ditch the Khan recommendations and for there to be no new tobacco control plan would be an own goal for the government. Smoking has a uniquely devastating impact on health. It causes illness and death on a huge scale, is the leading cause of cancer and costs the NHS £2.4bn every year to treat. Ministers should bring forward detailed plans to tackle this scourge on society as a matter of urgency.”
When asked by presenter Justin Webb on this morning’s BBC 4 Today programme her commitment to publishing the awaited tobacco control plan Thérèse Coffey, stated that her top priority was ABCD (ambulances, backlogs, care, doctors and dentists). Questioned further on whether the control plan was still in place, Coffey answered: “as far as I’m aware…policies are in place. Some plans I think are still in draft form. On whether she backed the tobacco control plan, Coffey avoided by saying “Justin, I’m here to back the backlogs [referring to her ABCD plan] that’s the key thing i’m focused on right now, and that’s what I’m sticking to.”
Source: Guardian, 11 October 2022
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Radio 4 - Today programme (To listen to Coffey’s comments on the tobacco control plan, skip to 1.53.25.)
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Deputy PM Thérèse Coffey squirms when challenged over her voting record on smoking in cars with children
LBC radio host Nick Ferrari questioned health secretary Thérèse Coffey on the Government's smokefree policy, following reports that a new strategy on smoking would be dropped.
Questioning Coffey on why she had in the past opposed banning smoking in cars with children, she responded: "Oh probably because I didn't think it was the right thing to be doing to tell parents how to handle the situation [...] I can't recall now if the law changed or not. But I'm not getting into that necessarily."
With Nick clarifying that the law had been changed, Coffey remained noncommittal when pushed on whether she was committed to making England smoke free by 2030, in line with the Government’s ambition. Coffey replied that "I cannot give you a view right now, because I haven't looked into these general prevention policies. But there's no particular reason I'm not being told that we're off track. But I'm not being told anything."
Pressed further, Coffey said: “Well, I’m a government minister. So that’s government policy today, then that’s what I agree with. I don’t have personal views on these sorts of matters. They are government policy, and that’s what we will continue to focus on.”
Finally asked if she believed smoking was dangerous, Coffey said: "I think many people smoke in this country knowing it's a potential source of all sorts of different problems that can bring health challenges immediately or indeed in later life."
In response to the new of a new strategy on smoking being shelved, Alex Cunningham, Labour MP for Stockton North has said Coffey should “hang her head in shame” and put the health of the nation ahead of her own opinion and self-interests.
Cunningham, who is also Vice Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health, led the campaign against smoking in a car with a child under the age of 18 as his first Private Members Bill and was successful in pushing the Conservative Government to adopt the law in 2015. At the time, the British Lung Foundation estimated that half a million children were exposed to secondhand smoke in a car every week, and 77% of respondents to a YouGov poll, including almost two thirds of smokers were in favour. In 2017, after the legislation came into force support for the legislation prohibiting smoking in cars carrying children rose to to 82% of smokers.
Cunningham said: “The banning of smoking in a car with a child was a positive step forward in protecting the health of young people. It was a campaign that took me three years to convince the Tory Government to support, so it beggars belief that the Health Secretary is not only opposed to measures that would keep children safe but was also completely ignorant that such a law existed. I’d suggest she takes a refresher course in the legislation she is meant to have responsibility for as she is quite clearly unfit for the role she holds at the moment.”
Source: LBC, 11 October 2022
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Record number of illegal vapes seized by Hammersmith & Fulham council
Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Council is on track to seize a record number of illegal disposable e-cigarettes this year.
Since December last year, the council has seized nearly 6,000 illicit vapes, containing up to eight times more e-liquid than is allowed, or two-and-a-half times the maximum permitted nicotine strength. The total selling price of the seized items would have been in the region of £55,000.
In a recent H&F Trading Standards operation two 18-year-old women were sold a vape containing 10 millilitres of e-liquid from a vape specialist store, in breach of the legal maximum of two millilitres capacity. The illicit vape had not been displayed in the shop and was only offered when our mystery shoppers asked if the store stocked any larger sizes. The hidden nature of the sale suggests that the business knew the product was illegal. Despite e-cigarettes being age-restricted products, neither of the test purchasers were asked to provide ID.
H&F Trading Standards officers subsequently seized 362 illegal vapes from the store.
Source: Hammersmith and Fulham, 6 October 2022
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Global e-cigarettes market to reach $24.6 billion by 2027
The global market for e-cigarettes estimated at $14.1 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of $24.6 Billion by 2027.
China, the world`s second largest economy, is forecast to reach a projected market size of US$5.6 Billion by the year 2027. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 7.6% and 6.9% respectively over the 2020-2027 period.
Source: Yahoo Finance, 10 October 2022
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Finland study: Men age faster than women, but the younger generation is closing the gap
In Finland, the life expectancy gap between the sexes was greatest in the 1970s, when life expectancy at birth was almost 10 years higher for women than for men. However, in recent decades, this gap has gradually narrowed. Researchers from the University of Jyväskylä and the University of Helsinki investigated whether there are differences in biological ageing between men and women and whether the potential differences can be explained by lifestyle-related factors. These differences were investigated in younger (21 to 42 years) and older (50 to 76 years) adult twins from the Finnish Twin Cohort.
The study found that men are biologically older than women of the same chronological age, and the difference is considerably larger in older participants. More frequent smoking among men explained the sex gap in aging in older but not in young adult twins. In addition, men's larger body size explained a small part of the sex gap in both age groups.
The results suggest that the decline in smoking among men partly explains why the sex gap in life expectancy has narrowed in recent decades.
Source: Medical Xpress, October 10 2022
Study - Do Epigenetic Clocks Provide Explanations for Sex Differences in Life Span? A Cross-Sectional Twin Study
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