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Majority of Britons would support law banning sale of cigarettes or tobacco to anyone born after 2008, YouGov survey reveals
Most Brits would back a ban on the sale of cigarettes or tobacco to anyone born after 2008, a YouGov survey has revealed. 57% of British people would support the legislation to bar younger generations from purchasing smoking-related products, while 34% said they would 'strongly' support it.
The results come after New Zealand introduced this very legislation for people born on and after 2009, meaning that they will never legally be able to smoke. Its radical new law will also see the minimum age for purchasing cigarettes going up in an effort to make the country cigarette-free by 2025.
The UK government set out a plan in 2019 to make England smokefree by 2030. In 2020, Cancer Research UK forecasted that it will be at least 2037 before the Government's pledged smoking-free target is met. Cancer Research UK said that rates would need to drop 40 per cent faster than they are currently for the target to be hit.
Source: Daily Mail, 14 December 2022
Editorial note: Javed Khan’s independent review of tobacco policies published in June 2022 proposed increasing the age of sale by one year every year.
See also: Khan review - Making smoking obsolete
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Decade of neglect means NHS unable to tackle care backlog, report says
A “decade of neglect” by successive Conservative administrations has weakened the NHS to the point that it will not be able to tackle the 7 million-strong backlog of care, a government-commissioned King’s Fund report has concluded. The report findings are based on a review of evidence around waiting times and, in particular, interviews with 14 experts, including many of the key figures in Labour’s successful eradication of long waits.
The report says years of denying funding to the health service and failing to address its growing workforce crisis have left it with too few staff, too little equipment and too many outdated buildings to perform the amount of surgery needed. It identifies former PM David Cameron’s decision to reduce the NHS’s annual budget increases from Labour’s 3.6% to an average of just 1.5% as the key reason for the service’s loss of capacity. The service’s performance against a number of waiting time targets that Labour introduced began worsening in 2015.
The report concludes important promises made earlier this year in NHS England’s “elective recovery plan” are highly unlikely to be met. They included pledges to end waits of two years, 18 months and one year by the summer, next spring and 2025 respectively.
The government has promised to put £8bn into tackling the backlog and NHS England has set up dozens of community diagnostic centres to help speed up patients’ tests and treatment.
“Though Covid certainly exacerbated the crisis in the NHS and social care, we are ultimately paying the price for a decade of neglect,” said the King’s Fund chief executive, Richard Murray. He added: "The NHS in 2022 faces many of the same challenges it faced in 2000: unacceptably long waiting times and a service hobbled by staff shortages. To that is now added a cost of living crisis, industrial action by staff and a backdrop of a weak economy and weak public finances.”
Source: Guardian, 12 December 2022
See also: King’s Fund report - NHS staffing shortages: Why do politicians struggle to give the NHS the staff it needs?
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1.4 tonnes of illegal vapes seized by North East Trading Standards teams
Trading Standards teams from across the North East, working together as the North East Trading Standards Association, have removed a total of 1.4 tonnes of non-compliant disposable vaping products from sale over the past six months.
Compliant disposable vapes will have a maximum tank size of 2ml and the highest nicotine strength will be 20mg/ml or 2%. Some of the products seized had tank sizes up to seven times the legal limit as well as incorrect labelling, with devices lacking information including health warnings, batch details and hazard warnings. Vaping devices must also display the details of a UK-based manufacturer or importer who can be contacted in the event of a safety issue. A large quantity of the disposable vapes seized were not authorised for sale in the UK.
Ian Harrison, on behalf of North East Trading Standards Association, said: “Vaping poses a small fraction of the risks of smoking, which kills two out of three lifelong smokers, but the number of vaping devices seized by trading standards indicates the scale of non-compliant products on the market. Consumers should take care when buying vaping products and a reputable vape shop is always the best option for people wanting to use them to quit smoking. Trading Standards will continue to play a role in ensuring the vape market is regulated to provide reassurance to consumers.”
Ailsa Rutter OBE, Director of Fresh and Balance, said: “The best advice to smokers is that if you smoke, vape instead – but if you don’t smoke don’t vape. Vaping offers a much less harmful option for smokers who want to quit tobacco but we need to ensure that the products for sale comply with the UK regulations. Tobacco smoking remains our biggest killer and a key driver of health inequalities in the North East, with around 5,000 people in our region dying every year as a result of their addiction, and all of this is entirely preventable. We would encourage any smoker who is considering quitting tobacco to give vaping a go and reduce their risk of developing a smoking-related disease and dying early.”
If a consumer suspects they have bought a non-compliant vape, or have concerns regarding a retailer selling vapes to children, they should report it to the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 0808 223 1133.
Source: Wired Gov, 14 December 2022
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Lithium being trashed by the tonne as disposable vapes flood the US market
Five disposable vapes are being thrown away every second by young people in the US despite the devices containing reusable lithium-ion batteries, research suggests. Over a year, this amounts to 150 million devices which together contain enough lithium for about 6,000 Teslas.
A survey of more than 2,700 young people carried out by the Truth Initiative, a public health organisation working to end smoking and vaping, revealed that more than half of the 15- to 24-year-olds who vaped use disposable devices. Of those, two-thirds put their used devices straight into the household trash.
This new data suggests that disposable vapes are now the most popular variety of e-cigarette in the US among young people, overtaking pod-based systems, such as Juul, and vape pens – both of which allow refills of vape liquid and therefore last longer. The research shows Elf Bar has risen steeply in popularity to become the most used disposable vape brand by young people.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that vapes are being incorrectly discarded in household trash because they are often branded as “disposable”. This leads to the entire device, including its battery, being thrown away in household trash.
Given its high energy density, demand for lithium for batteries is forecast to increase fivefold by 2030, according to one industry consultant. Producing lithium is a complex process that typically generates high carbon emissions and therefore lithium waste from disposable vapes are seen as an increasing problem for supply chains. Alissa Kendall, a professor at University of California Davis, emphasised the importance of increasing the recovery of lithium from disposable vape devices and has called for better recycling networks in the US.
Source: Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 15 December 2022
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