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Pharmacists encouraged to provide advice on smoking, drinking and obesity
New guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has urged pharmacists to 'start conversations' about their customers' health. According to guidance included in a new draft quality standard, community pharmacists should discuss health and wellbeing with their customers and provide advice and referrals for support on smoking, alcohol and maintaining a healthy weight.
Professor Gillian Leng, deputy chief executive and director of health and social care at NICE, said: “Community pharmacists engage every day with people who buy over-the-counter medicines, collect prescriptions or ask for advice. This is a vital opportunity to support people to maintain good health but also signpost them to other health services.”
In 2017/18, there were 489,300 hospital admissions for smoking, 337,870 for excess drinking and 10,660 hospital admissions for obesity. Primary care minister Jo Churchill said: “Highly-skilled community pharmacists are an integral and trusted part of the NHS and we want every patient with a minor illness, or those seeking wellbeing guidance, to think ‘Pharmacy First’. As the health service treats more patients than ever before, it is paramount that, where appropriate, patients can be assessed close to home, saving unnecessary trips to A&E or their GP and helping them get the care they need quicker.”
Source: Evening Standard, 17 January 2020
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Comment: Is standing up for expertise a fool’s errand?
Anna McKie from Times Higher Education has interviewed academics and advocates about the risks they take in speaking up for their research. McKie spoke to Professor Linda Bauld, the Bruce and John Usher Professor of Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, who has been hounded by the tobacco industry because her work exposed the dangers of smoking:
“For decades, they used well-established techniques to try and spread doubt about the science,” Bauld says. This included an internet hate campaign that smeared her work, particularly for the UK’s Department of Health. She was labelled either biased or lazy.
“The worst period I had was the trolling,” she recalls. “The police were involved. I had hate mail delivered to my door. I had anonymous phone calls.” Ironically, her more recent work suggesting that e-cigarettes are less harmful than traditional cigarettes has elicited criticism that she is now in the pocket of the tobacco industry. The problem, she says, is that there are groups of researchers and policymakers who are in effect prohibitionist, rejecting the role of harm reduction in public health policy regarding tobacco. The fact that these opponents are within her own community “makes it really personal. You end up questioning: ‘Am I doing the right kind of science?’” she says.
Now researchers in Australia are digging into Bauld’s life and work, she says: “They find meetings I’ve attended to see if someone from the tobacco industry was there so they can say I am biased. But the accusations [that she is taking money from e-cigarette companies] are fundamentally wrong. The industry attacks were really unpleasant, but these are professionally hurtful in a different way.”
They mean that Bauld and her colleagues don’t get invited to certain conferences, or are indirectly prevented from publishing in certain journals. “I’m too old to worry about career progression, but you want to be taken seriously as an independent scientist in any forum you enter into, rather than people having a preconceived notion about how you conduct yourself,” she says. Moreover, she adds, accusations that certain researchers are in the pocket of industry “undermine the public’s faith in any advice about smoking”. But the fact that tobacco is still the leading preventable cause of death feeds Bauld’s determination to continue.
Source: Times Higher Education, 16 January 2020
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Sir Roger Scruton obituary
"Roger Scruton, who has died of lung cancer aged 75, was a philosopher and a controversial public intellectual. Active in the fields of aesthetics, art, music, political philosophy and architecture, both inside and outside the academic world, he dedicated himself to nurturing beauty, “re-enchanting the world” and giving intellectual rigour to conservatism.
In 2002, a leaked email to the company Japanese Tobacco International Scruton asked for an increase of £1,000 on the £4,500 a month JTI was already paying him for the placing of articles in the British press that could be deemed helpful to their marketing. Although Scruton had been a smoker himself, this did not exactly follow Kant’s categorical imperative (we should do only what we would be prepared for everyone else to have to do) of which he was such a clear, fervent expositor."
Source: Guardian, 14 January 2020
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The South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Integrated Care System (ICS) has set out its plans to improve health and reduce inequalities for its population of 1.5 million.
The plan includes pledges to reduce the number of pregnant women who are smoking when they give birth to 6% by March 2024 and to reduce smoking in the general adult population to 10%. It also promises to improve both one and five-year cancer survival rates, and to increase the percentage of people who are diagnosed at stage one and two of the disease. The plan also contains commitments to reduce the gap in life expectancy for people with mental illnesses and learning disabilities, to reduce death rates from cardiovascular disease and to lower suicide rates.
The ICS Chief Executive Sir Andrew Cash said the plan built on pledges made by the regional sustainability and transformation partnership formed in 2016. He said: “As a South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw region we have joined forces to work as a system where it makes sense to do so and where it makes a real difference to patients, staff and the public. Our new five-year plan recommits our ambition for everyone in South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw to have a great start in life, supporting them to be healthy and live longer, while aiming to be the best delivery and transformation system in the country.”
Source: The Star, 17 January 2020
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Shop owner jailed for selling £200,000 supply of illegal tobacco
A shop owner who operated in Wolverhampton has been jailed for selling an estimated £200,000 worth of illegal and counterfeit cigarettes and tobacco at a convenience store. The shop owner was given a custodial sentence of 28 months.
Trading Standards teams in Wolverhampton say they found a "shocking" variety of fake and genuine cigarettes being sold illegally at the shop, with an estimated 400,000 cigarettes and 50kg of rolling tobacco seized. No UK duty had been paid on the stash.
Source: ITV, 16 January 2019
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US vaping-related deaths rise to 60, cases of illness to 2,668
US health officials on Thursday, 16th January, reported 3 more deaths from a respiratory illness tied to vaping, taking the total death toll to 60. As of January 14th 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 66 new cases of the illness associated with use of e-cigarettes or vaping products. The number of people hospitalised now stands at 2,668.
In November 2019, US officials reported the discovery of Vitamin E acetate — believed to be used as a cutting agent in vaping products containing THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana — in all lung samples from 29 patients. CDC in November described Vitamin E acetate as a “chemical of concern” and recommended that the substance not be added to e-cigarette, or vaping products, while the investigation is ongoing.
Source: Reuters, 16 January 2020
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ASH and Cancer Research UK (CRUK) have published the sixth annual report looking at local tobacco control and smoking cessation services in England. The report presents the findings of a survey of tobacco control leads from all local authorities in England which have responsibility for public health.
The report finds that local authorities have coped well and managed to maintain stop smoking services in the face of ongoing budget cuts. The report finds there are many opportunities for local authorities to build on their successes, including partnering with the NHS locally. However, without additional funding for local tobacco control, the Government will struggle to reach its target for a smokefree England by 2030.
Key findings from the report include that:
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69% of local authorities offered a specialist stop smoking service
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Budgets for smoking cessation and tobacco control have been cut in over a third of councils for the fifth consecutive year
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Lack of funding appears to have led to reductions in the availability of services, medication, training and wider tobacco control activity
ASH and CRUK are jointly calling on the Government to reverse cuts to public health funding and deliver new investment in local tobacco control by imposing a ”polluter pays” charge on the tobacco industry. This charge could raise £265m - £500m per year and could fund stop smoking services, enforcement against the illicit tobacco trade and mass media public health campaigns to help reduce smoking.
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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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