The New Nicotine Alliance (UK) has welcomed ‘the bold vision’ a UK MP in highlighting the increased role that tobacco harm reduction could play in the future of tobacco control policy.
In a press note issued on Friday, the Alliance said that, in a debate on the Government’s Tobacco Control Plan in the House of Commons on July 19, Sir Kevin Barron had highlighted the gulf between the UK and Ireland, two countries with identical traditional tobacco control policies but with differing approaches to electronic cigarettes. Between 2012 and 2016, smoking had dropped by nearly a quarter in the UK, while in Ireland, where e-cigarettes were viewed with suspicion, the smoking rate had risen.
‘Sir Kevin, who has 20 years’ experience of government policy surrounding tobacco, suggested that a “proper harm reduction strategy” which further welcomed the advent of innovative nicotine delivery products could deliver significant further benefits to public health in the UK,’ the press note said.
‘The NNA applauds Sir Kevin’s bold vision of the increased role that tobacco harm reduction could play in the future of tobacco control policy and calls on Under-Parliamentary Secretary of State, Steve Brine, to be less cautious and to commit to promoting a better understanding of risk-reduced products amongst health authorities under his charge.’
“E-cigarettes are a proven safer alternative to smoking and the UK boasts 1.5 million former smokers who have converted from combustible tobacco to exclusively vaping instead,” said NNA chair Sarah Jakes (pictured). “Sir Kevin’s comments are most welcome, but it is continually disappointing that Steve Brine is reluctant to recognise the part that recreational use of these products can play. Instead of adhering to a goal of total nicotine abstinence, it would be better to install policies which would encourage long-term use of alternatives.
“As mentioned during the debate, many smokers genuinely enjoy smoking and view giving up smoking as giving up on an enjoyable part of their life. Devices that can deliver the nicotine they enjoy without the harm of combustible tobacco are a perfect solution for huge numbers of people. Government should be more understanding of the pleasure that nicotine can deliver and of the reasons that current smokers continue to smoke.
“Pleasure should not be a dirty word when it comes to nicotine, just as it isn’t when talking about a pint in the pub or a welcome coffee in the morning. It is the combustion of tobacco which causes the harm, and if smokers are more confident in trying reduced-risk products, there will be even more future public health successes, like the ones highlighted by Sir Kevin yesterday [July 19].
“The UK is regarded worldwide as a global leader in tobacco harm reduction and the results speak for themselves, therefore we hope that Mr Brine will show more leadership, and less caution, towards safer nicotine products to better enable him to achieve the ambitious targets that he has set in the government’s Tobacco Control Plan.”
Tag: United Kingdom
A cautionary tale
Don't say a word
The UK Government has said it will take Philip Morris to court unless it stops illegally targeting UK consumers with tobacco adverts, according to a story by Katie Morley for the Electronic Telegraph.
Earlier this week the Department of Health reportedly sent a formal order to Phillip Morris telling it to remove poster adverts for ‘healthier’ tobacco products from shops around the UK.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, the public health minister, Steve Brine, warned that the department was prepared to take legal action against Phillip Morris to protect UK consumers from being targeted by the adverts.
Advertising tobacco can result in a financial penalty or custodial sentence of up to six months.
Phillip Morris denies the adverts are illegal and says it wants to help smokers by providing them with better tobacco alternatives.Juul launching in UK
Juul Labs is launching its vaping device in the UK this week, according to a story by Martinne Geller for Reuters.
Since launching in the US in 2015, Juul has transformed the market there, where it now accounts for nearly 70 percent of tracked electronic-cigarette sales.
The Juul device will reportedly be available in 250 vape shops across the UK by the end of this week.
A starter pack, including the device and four nicotine pods, will cost about £29.99 ($39.66).
Grant Winterton, Juul Labs’ president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told Reuters that the UK had been chosen as Juul’s third market after the US and Israel, partly because it had the world’s “most supportive government” when it came to encouraging smokers to vape. Also on the radar are France, Germany and Italy.Britain quitting quitting
The number of prescriptions issued for drugs aimed at helping smokers quit their habit fell by 75 percent in England during the past decade, according to a story in The Guardian published ahead of the release of a new report.
The report, based on an analysis of NHS prescribing data, was due to be published by the British Lung Foundation (BLF) under the name Less Help to Quit: What’s happening to stop-smoking prescriptions across Britain.
General Practitioners were said by the Guardian to be the most common first port of call for smokers who wanted to beat their addiction in England, with 38 percent of them choosing this route.
However, primary care prescriptions of nicotine replacement patches and gum and the smoking-cessation drugs bupropion and varenicline had fallen by three-quarters in England between 2005-06 and 2016-17.
The report is said to indicate also wide regional variations in the prescribing of such products across Great Britain.
In Scotland, there was said to have been a 40 percent drop in prescriptions for stop-smoking drugs, while in Wales prescription rates had fallen by two-thirds.
The drop in prescriptions had come about even though a combination of support and medication had been shown to be the most effective way to help smokers quit, the Guardian reported.
Such a combination, which was recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, was said to increase the chance of a smoker’s beating her addiction threefold, when compared with going “cold turkey”.
Alternative routes to getting help, such as specialist clinics, are also declining in some areas, the report finds.
In the English county of Worcestershire, for example, where 15 percent of the population smokes, the local authority decommissioned its stop-smoking services, and local clinical commissioning groups advised GPs in April 2016 not to prescribe stop-smoking aids for new patients.
As a result of these changes, the Guardian said, 98 people last year were helped to quit smoking across the Worcestershire council area, down from 2,208 the previous year. And there were no recorded attempts to quit through GPs and only one in a hospital setting.
The BLF was quoted as saying that smokers were bearing the brunt of government budget cuts and were being discriminated against.Social smoking
Two consecutive generations of children in the UK had dramatically different rates of smoking, and one major reason for this may comprise the changing socioeconomic status and behaviors of their parents and friends, according to a story by Cheryl Platzman Weinstock for Reuters, citing the results of new research.
The US study team, led by Jeremy Staff of Pennsylvania State University in University Park, were said to have analyzed data on two large groups of UK children: one made up of children born during one week in April 1970, the other of children born between late 2000 and early 2002.
A total of 23,506 children answered questionnaires at ages 10 or 11. The researchers also had data about the children’s parents, including their educational and smoking histories, as well as their household incomes.
Overall, 14.5 percent of the children born in 1970 had smoked at least one cigarette by the age of 10-11, while that was true for only 2.4 percent of the later generation.
In addition, while 14 percent of the children born in 1970 had a friend at age 10-11 who smoked, five percent in the later generation did.
Another difference between generations involved the children’s mothers: in the older generation, 57 percent of mothers had no higher education; in the newer generation, that had fallen to eight percent. In addition, about 43 percent of the mothers of the older generation were smokers themselves when their child was five years old, and that had fallen to 33 percent for the younger generation.
While the overall drop in early smoking from one generation to the next was “cause for celebration,” the authors wrote, the results also highlighted the fact that “childhood smoking in today’s young people in the UK is now more strongly linked to early life disadvantages compared to a generation ago”.Getting the message across
Smokers believe that advertising that included messages about the positive public-health and financial potential of vaping would be key to them making the switch from smoking, according to a press note from the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA) citing new research.
The study, which was conducted by Consumer Intelligence on behalf of the UKVIA is said to have shown that:- 68 percent of respondents felt that changing current advertising restrictions imposed by the Advertising Standards Agency to allow public health messages to be promoted by the vaping industry would help more smokers make the switch.
- 63 percent of those interviewed felt that information from their GP, pharmacist or a healthcare professional would influence their decision to make the change;
- 61 percent said that information in a healthcare environment would be beneficial;
- 48 percent called for more ‘educational advertising’ by public health organizations or the government in the media;
- 61 percent agreed with the idea that Public Health England’s recent recommendation for hospitals to allow vaping on their premises and to sell e-cigarettes and e-liquids on site would convince more of them to take up vaping.
“This highlights the critical role that accurate advertising has to play in realizing the public health prize that vaping represents,” said John Dunne (pictured), a director at UKVIA, in commenting on the findings. “This isn’t coming from the industry but from smokers who could be convinced to break their habits.
“More education all round is needed to get smokers to make the switch and to realise the full public health potential of vaping. There needs to be a strong and cohesive message from government, public health and the vaping industry to make switching from smoking to vaping an obvious choice.”
The research, which surveyed more than 1,000 smokers, revealed also that the vaping industry, despite its fast rate of growth, was in danger of not fulfilling its potential. It showed that many people considered vaping to be as harmful or more so than smoking. A significant number of people wrongly believed that vaping was more expensive than smoking and were confused by the array of vaping devices on the market.
The Consumer Intelligence study looked also at smokers’ experiences of and attitudes to using e-cigarettes to identify what was most likely to help them make the switch to vaping. It showed that:- The odor of conventional cigarettes (62 percent of respondents), vaping being cheaper (60 percent) and favourable insurance premiums for vapers (50 percent) were viewed by smokers as being key influences in making the switch from smoking to vaping;
- 46 percent of smokers said media coverage of vaping hadn’t encouraged them to consider a switch to vaping;
- Over-55s are the least likely group to have tried vaping and are proving to be the hardest group to reach with vaping communications, with 73 percent claiming not to have seen any form of information from the media and health bodies.
“The research reveals that there is an appetite for better information, including clear benefits in terms of assured health implications and the cost savings that can be made by consumers,” said Dunne. “Current advertising restrictions inevitably make it very difficult to reach smokers on the potential health benefits. This is particularly concerning when considering smokers over 55, who are most likely to suffer the ill effects of smoking. We currently have few ways to let them know that a switch to vaping could dramatically improve their health.”
Why 'ex-smokers' relapse
New findings published in the Journal of Substance Use suggest that many ex-smokers experience quitting as a ‘loss’, according to a story in news-medical.net.
The findings, based on research at the University of East Anglia, indicate too that smokers who [believe they] have quit often relapse because they want to recapture a sense of lost social identity.
“Although many people do manage to quit, relapse is very common,” lead researcher, Dr. Caitlin Notley, was quoted as saying.
The research team was said to have studied in-depth interviews with people who had quit and relapsed. Forty-three participants described their history of smoking and previous quit attempts, their current quit attempt, and discussed any smoking relapses. The researchers then studied further 23 of the participants who provided the most detailed information about relapsing to smoking.
“What we have found is that relapse is associated with a whole range of emotional triggers’” Notley said. “It is often tied up with people wanting to recapture a lost social identity – their smoker identity.
“People want to feel part of a social group, and recover a sense of who they are – with smoking having been part of their identity, for most, since their teenage years.Imperial Board change
Imperial Brands said yesterday that David Haines, a non-executive director and chairman of the Remuneration Committee, was stepping down from its Board of Directors, with immediate effect.
This follows Haines’ appointment as chief executive of the Upfield Group, the Amsterdam-based parent company of Unilever’s former global spreads business purchased by KKR.
Haines will be succeeded as chairman of the Remuneration Committee by Malcolm Wyman, who will remain the senior independent director.
Chairman Mark Williamson said: “I would like to thank David for his significant contribution over the past six years and wish him well in his new role”.Supporting research
Imperial Brands Ventures, a subsidiary of Imperial Brands, said on Thursday that it had taken an equity stake in Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies (OCT).
‘OCT is a biopharmaceutical company focused on researching, developing, and licensing cannabinoid-based compounds and therapies,’ Imperial Brands said in a note on its website.
‘Its activities are licensed for operation by the UK Home Office.’
Matthew Phillips, Imperial Brands’ chief development officer, was quoted as saying that Imperial was pleased to be partnering with OCT.
“Cannabinoid products have significant potential and our investment enables Imperial to support OCT’s important research while building a deeper understanding of the medical cannabis market.”What's not to like?
Vaping helps people stop smoking – and can even encourage them to quit when they aren’t looking to do so, according to new research from the UK’s University of East Anglia (UAE).
In a piece on the eurekalert.org website, the University said its study had shown that smokers who switched to vaping might be better able [than those using other quit methods] to stay smoke-free in the long term.
It had shown, too, that even people who weren’t looking to stop smoking had eventually quit because they found vaping more enjoyable than smoking.
“E-cigarettes are at least 95 percent less harmful than tobacco smoking, and they are now the most popular aid to quitting smoking in the UK,” said lead researcher Dr. Caitlin Notley of the UEA’s Norwich Medical School.
“However, the idea of using e-cigarettes to stop smoking, and particularly long-term use, remains controversial.”
The research team carried out in-depth interviews with 40 vapers and, in doing so, found that vaping might support long-term smoking abstinence.
“Not only does it substitute many of the physical, psychological, social and cultural elements of cigarette smoking, but it is pleasurable in its own right, as well as convenient and cheaper than smoking,” said Notley. “Our study group also felt better in themselves – they noticed better respiratory function, taste and smell.
“But the really interesting thing we found was that vaping may also encourage people who don’t even want to stop smoking, to eventually quit.”
While most of the sample group reported long histories of tobacco smoking and multiple previous quit attempts, a minority (17 percent) said they enjoyed smoking and had never seriously attempted to quit.
“These were our accidental quitters,” said Dr Notley. “They hadn’t intended to quit smoking and had tried vaping on a whim, or because they had been offered it by friends. They went on to like it, and only then saw it as a potential substitute for smoking.”
“Many people talked about how they saw vaping …as a no pressure approach to quitting,” she said.
