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** 13 January 2023
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** UK
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** British American Tobacco’s Jeyan Heper joins Alliance Pharma amid board shake-up (#1)
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** International
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** Smoking is back in the Capitol under new House Republican majority (#2)
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** US cancer death rate falls 33% since 1991, partly due to advances in treatment, early detection and less smoking, report says (#3)
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** Parliamentary activity
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** Debate: NHS: Long-term Strategy (#4)
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** Links of the week
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** Video: Jamie Hartmann-Boyce on e-cigarettes (#5)
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** Blog: Anti-smoking policies have strong public support (#6)
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** UK
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** British American Tobacco’s Jeyan Heper joins Alliance Pharma amid board shake-up
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**
A tobacco executive has been appointed as chief operating officer of a healthcare company whose boss is facing disqualification proceedings over drug price rises.

Alliance Pharma said Jeyan Heper, who was head of global transformation at British American Tobacco, the maker of Dunhill and Lucky Strike cigarettes, will join from the start of next month. The appointment was announced alongside further changes to Alliance’s board after Peter Butterfield, its chief executive, temporarily stood down towards the end of last year.

This comes after the Competition and Markets Authority began court proceedings in September to disqualify seven executives following a Times investigation that exposed price rises on an anti-nausea drug used by chemotherapy patients.

Alliance, based in Chippenham, Wiltshire, is quoted on Aim, the London Stock Exchange’s junior market. It holds the marketing rights to about 80 brands and employs 250 people.

Heper, 49, led the development of BAT’s strategy to broaden the tobacco manufacturer into non-nicotine consumer products. He has previously held executive roles at Procter & Gamble and Danone Group.

Source: The Times, 13 January 2023
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** International
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** Smoking is back in the Capitol under new House Republican majority

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** The Republicans are back in control in the US House of Representatives and members are once again allowed to smoke inside the building.

The Republican majority has made the rule change despite the fact that smoking indoors is banned in Washington, DC. The House and Senate are federal property, governed by rules largely left up to House and Senate leadership.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi banned smoking from much of the House premises when she took control in 2007, but members were still allowed to smoke inside their offices.

Bill Clinton banned smoking in a number of federal buildings during his presidency, but only those under the control of the executive branch. In the House, where Kevin McCarthy was finally elected Speaker and leader of the new, slim Republican majority after 15 rounds of balloting, the majority makes many of its own rules. Under Mr McCarthy’s leadership, the House remains one of a select few office buildings in the country that still allows smoking. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), tobacco use is the number one cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the country.

“Over 16 million people live with at least one disease caused by smoking, and 58 million nonsmoking Americans are exposed to secondhand smoke,” the CDC website reads. Under Republican House leadership, those numbers appear set to increase.

Source: Independent, 12 January 2023
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** US cancer death rate falls 33% since 1991, partly due to advances in treatment, early detection and less smoking, report says

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** The rate of people dying from cancer in the United States has continuously declined over the past three decades, according to a new report from the American Cancer Society.

The US cancer death rate has fallen 33% since 1991, which corresponds to an estimated 3.8 million deaths averted, according to the report, published yesterday in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. The rate of lives lost to cancer continued to shrink in the most recent year for which data is available, between 2019 and 2020, by 1.5%.

The report attributes this steady progress to improvements in cancer treatment, drops in smoking and increases in early detection.

The new report includes data from national programs and registries, including those at the National Cancer Institute, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries. Data showed that the US cancer death rate rose during most of the 20th century, largely due to an increase in lung cancer deaths related to smoking. Then, as smoking rates fell and improvements in early detection and treatments for some cancers increased, there was a decline in the cancer death rate from its peak in 1991. Since then, the pace of the decline has slowly accelerated.

Source: CNN, 12 January 2023

See also: CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians - Cancer statistics, 2023 ([link removed])
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** Parliamentary activity
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** Debate: NHS: Long-term Strategy

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** On Wednesday 11th January, MPs debated the importance of a new NHS long term strategy in response to the current NHS crisis. Led by Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, the substantive motion put forward called for, “a long-term plan to end delayed discharges, give the NHS the staff it needs to treat patients on time, and reform primary and community care, so that fewer people end up in hospital.”

Mr Streeting stated the Government, “do not focus nearly enough on prevention, early intervention and care in the community.” Mr Streeting condemn[ed] the Government for “failing to recognize the current crisis in the National Health Service". Mr Streeting cited the banning of smoking in pubs as key evidence of previous Government action on preventable health.

Responding for the Government, the Secretary of Stated for Health and Social Care, Steve Barclay, highlighted the £2.8 billion and £4.7 billion available Government funding for social care in each of the next two years, and the Government’s 10-year partnership with Moderna, to give 10,000 people early access to cancer therapies. Mr Barclay argued, “[This] kind of work will shift the dial on prevention.”

Chair of the Health Select Committee, Steve Brine stated: “The Select Committee will be looking significantly at prevention this year”, and stated the Secretary of State will be coming before the Select Committee on 31 January.

Taiwo Owatemi, Labour MP for Coventry North West, urged the Government to “look again at utilising the key resource of community pharmacy […] to rebalance workload across primary care, bring healthcare back into the community, reduce pressures on GPs and waiting times and deliver healthcare that is much more prevention-focused.”

Shadow Minister for Health and Social Care, Liz Kendall, vowed Labour, “will have a relentless focus on prevention and early intervention”.

Source: Hansard, 11 January 2023
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** Links of the week
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** Video: Jamie Hartmann-Boyce on e-cigarettes
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**
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** Dr Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, of the University of Oxford and Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group has worked with the UK Government and Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) to investigate the effectiveness of e-cigarettes as a stop-smoking aid, and whether they have lower negative health impacts than smoking.

Dr Hartmann-Boyce details the three main areas under review in the commissioned work: whether the flavours of e-cigarettes impact their use, how long people keep using e-cigarettes and measuring biomarkers of potential harm.

Hazel Cheeseman, Deputy Chief Executive at ASH noted the importance of working with talented researchers to provide robust evidence to inform policy.

This research was jointly-led by Nicola Lindson, Ailsa Butler and Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, funded by Cancer Research UK, the National Institute of Health and Care Research and the University of Oxford. The video is part of the University of Oxford Policy Engagement Network’s Researcher Stories series. The full series can be found here ([link removed]) .

See also: Cochrane review – Electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation ([link removed])
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** Blog: Anti-smoking policies have strong public support
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** The Behavioral Insights Team (BI) has published the findings from their recent survey of support for more radical smoking cessation policies among 7,566 people living in the UK. Some of the policies they asked about were taking from last year’s Khan review of tobacco control policies.

The survey found strong public support for bold policies to support smoking cessation in the UK, with positive net support for all policies included in the study.

The policies asked about were:
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** Banning smoking in hospitality, hospital grounds, and outdoor public spaces
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** Increasing tax on all forms of tobacco, including rolling tobacco
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** Increasing the legal age of the sale of tobacco from 18 by one year, every year
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** GPs prescribing e-cigarettes (vapes) to those trying to quit smoking
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** Increasing tax on cigarettes, but not on rolling tobacco
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** Providing free e-cigarette (vapes) starter packs to smokers in deprived communities
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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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