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Councillors call for ‘polluter pays’ levy on tobacco
Local councillors across England have urged the Government to introduce a ‘polluter pays’ levy on tobacco manufacturers and to replace the expired Tobacco Control Plan. The call for a levy and a new Tobacco Control Plan follows a new report from Cancer Research UK warning that the UK Government is almost a decade behind achieving its target for England to be Smokefree by 2030. The Tobacco Control Plan for England, published in 2017, expired at the end of 2022.
In response to Cancer Research UK’s report, nearly 50 councillors have written to the secretary of state for health and social care, Steve Barclay MP, urging the Government to bring forward a new Tobacco Control Plan and to introduce a ‘polluter pays’ levy on tobacco manufacturers.
Coordinated by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and Cancer Research UK, the letter highlights the fact that smoking is responsible for around 125,000 deaths per year and around 150 new cancer cases every day. It also warns that an estimated £3.6bn each year goes on smoking-related health and social care costs in England.
The letter reads: “Public health budgets have been squeezed, with many of us forced to make difficult decisions about the services we can offer to support our constituents. As councils, we are uniquely positioned to drive forward activity on tobacco across place and system. However, without bold national action and sustainable funding solution, our efforts will not be enough.”
“We urge you to publish a bold new Tobacco Control Plan including a "polluter pays" levy without delay to secure the investment we need to make the Smokefree 2030 ambition a reality in our communities.”
Source: Local Gov, 18 January 2023
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Trading Standards say illegal vapes are biggest threat on High Street
Concerns have grown over the number of illicit vapes seized by Trading Standards across the UK. In a survey of more than 400 Trading Standards officers, 60% said their main worries were shops selling illicit vapes which are potentially unsafe, and the sale of any vaping products to under-18s, which is also illegal. As the popularity of vaping has grown among children and young people, the government said it was considering what more could be done to limit them from vaping.
UK laws limit how much nicotine and e-liquid is contained in vapes, and which health warnings are required on packaging. Further, all e-cigarette and e-liquids containing nicotine have to be certified by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) before they can be sold in the UK, among many other requirements. But some shops are selling vapes containing 12,000 puffs of e-liquid, when the law permits only about 600. Others contain illegally high levels of nicotine.
"When Trading Standards teams do spot checks on the sale of vaping products to kids, we find around one in three businesses break the law," says Duncan Stephenson, director of external affairs at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute. Stephenson wants to see tougher penalties for these businesses and a review of how vaping products are promoted - particularly when it comes to flavourings, colours and branding which appeal to children.
In recent years, vapes and e-cigarettes have been a successful way of helping many people give up smoking, being far safer than normal cigarettes because they do not contain harmful tobacco, or produce dangerous tar or carbon monoxide from tobacco smoke. In a recent review commissioned by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, researchers said they however are not risk-free.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care in England said: "We have introduced tough regulations to deter the appeal of vaping to children, including restrictions on product advertising, setting limits on nicotine strength, labelling and safety requirements, and making it illegal to sell nicotine vapes to those aged under 18 years old. We are carefully considering the recommendations from the Khan review: making smoking obsolete, including what more can be done to protect children from vaping."
Source: BBC News, 19 January 2023
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Do as IEA say…
Pundits from the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) argue across the media that workers shouldn’t get above-inflation pay increases, claiming they are “just not affordable”, even “dangerous”. But the right-wing think tank’s own latest accounts reveal that one of its top staffers enjoyed a 28% pay rise in the year to March 2022.
Accounts show IEA development director Angela Harbutt, “partner” of IEA director-general Mark Littlewood, had her 2021-2022 pay increase to £122,571, up from £95,000 in the previous financial year. In fact her salary has increased by over 50% since 2019, when she received £81,000.
Littlewood himself has jumped from a band of £130,000-£140,000 in 2017 to one between £190,000-£200,000 in 2022, meaning a salary increase between 36-53%.
The Eye contacted the IEA to ask if this was a case of “do what we say, not what we do”, but received no reply.
Source: Private Eye, 18 January 2023 [print]
See also: Tobacco Tactics - Institute of Economic Affairs
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Baxter College instals toilet sensors to stop vaping
A school has spent £4,000 installing sensors in its toilets to crack down on pupils vaping. Baxter College in Kidderminster is one of the first schools in the UK to use the devices, which detect fumes from e-cigarettes and send an alert to management. The sensors also pick up sound above a certain volume and can detect if the devices have been tampered with. Staff hope it will deter vaping.
Head teacher Matthew Carpenter told the BBC: "When we were doing student surveys a lot of our younger students were saying they didn't like to go into the toilets because students were going in there to vape and it was making them feel uncomfortable [...] I think a lot of schools... are talking about what an issue [vaping] is in their toilets. [The sensors] aren't cheap, but they make a big difference, so there's a few [head teachers] coming out to see how we've implemented it."
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) estimated that in 2022, for the first time ever, more 11-17-year-olds had tried an e-cigarette (15.7%) than had tried a cigarette (14.4%).
Source: BBC News, 18 January 2023
See also: ASH - Use of e-cigarettes (vapes) among young people in Great Britain
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Opinion: The rest of the world is in disbelief at what the gambling industry has pulled off in Australia. We need real reform
Tim Costello, Australian minister and senior fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity, writes in the Guardian that for too long in Australian politics, the gambling industry has “wielded obscene power on Macquarie Street [...] acting like a shadow cabinet of its own”. Explaining their cultural impact, he writes the New South Wales (NSW) state contains a staggering 35% of the world’s poker machines in its clubs and pubs, with Australia nationally having the greatest gambling losses in the world – 40% greater than the nation that comes second. “The rest of the world is in disbelief at how one industry could pull this off,” he says.
Costello states that the industry’s influence is evidenced by the silence on gambling reform from Labor party politicians ahead of an upcoming election in New South Wales (NSW). He argues that reform is essential to minimise gambling harm, the worst of which occurs in the most deprived areas of NSW and to the people and communities that Labor is “supposed to represent”.
Costello concludes that the upcoming election is a real opportunity for gambling reform in NSW.
Source: Guardian, 17 January 2023
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Backbench debate: Government Alcohol Strategy 2012
Dan Carden, Labour MP for Liverpool Walton, led a debate on the government alcohol strategy ten years on, stating alcohol is “one of the three biggest lifestyle risk factors for disease and death” and that the country was at a “crisis point” with “alcohol-related harm estimated to cost society £21 billion annually”.
He welcomed the alcohol duty reforms due in August this year, noting that cuts and freezes to alcohol duty have cost the Treasury £8.6 billion since 2012. He called the Government’s record on alcohol policy one of “policies scrapped and promises broken” with “tragic consequences for individuals, their families and communities from the failure of this strategy”.
Carden urged for an independent review of alcohol that informs an alcohol strategy for the future, with a focus on advertising and alcohol taxes, referencing a November letter calling for the same thing with the Alcohol Health Alliance UK and 42 cross-party MPs to the Prime Minister.
Responding for the Government, Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire, Chris Philp, noted an increase in investment in drug and alcohol treatment in the last few years and the consumption of alcohol decline, with the number of alcohol-related violent incidents halve over the last 10 years. Philp did not make a commitment to initiate a review on alcohol strategy.
Source: Hansard, 18 January 2023
See also: Alcohol Health Alliance – Letter calling for an independent review on alcohol harm
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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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