Members of parliament chaired three panel discussions as about 160 participants took part in a conference in London yesterday staged by the UK Vaping Industry Association.
Mark Pawsey, the MEP for Rugby and chair for the All Party Parliamentary Group for E-cigarettes, chaired a regulatory-landscape session that was enlivened and overshadowed by Brexit unknowns.
The theme of the conference was, Going for Growth, but considerable time was spent on discussing why e-cigarette growth had faltered and what was needed to get it going again.
Many of the challenges the sector faced were familiar. One such challenge was overcoming the misunderstandings among smokers about the potential health benefits of switching to vaping: misunderstandings in part caused by the over-enthusiastic reporting of the results of poor-quality research into e-cigarettes and vaping.
Other challenges seemed less familiar but no less daunting. Wide product choice, normally seen as being essential in the quest to encourage smokers to switch to vaping, was seen by some as causing confusion and therefore as being a deterrent to switching. This problem seemed to be about the proliferation of versions of a single product, such as is comprised by e-cigarettes, rather than the introduction of different categories of products, such as e-cigarettes, snus and heat-not-burn (HNB) devices.
Gareth Johnson, the MP for Dartford [London] and parliamentary private secretary to the secretary for state for Exiting the European Union, chaired a session on the role of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries in the future of vaping. This session was almost entirely about the tobacco industry’s role because the pharmaceutical representative who had been scheduled to take part did not. And much of the session involved the tobacco-industry representatives (British American Tobacco, Imperial Brands, Japan Tobacco International and Philip Morris International) trying to explain how they could convince smokers and public health bodies to trust their research given the distrust built up in previous years.
The conference was noteworthy, among other things, for the level of tension in respect of heat-not-burn (HNB) products. Some participants representing e-cigarettes seemed to take the view that HNB products and e-cigarettes should not be too closely aligned. One person questioned whether HNB products were piggybacking on the reduced-harm credentials of e-cigarettes.
The Rt Hon Norman Lamb (pictured), the MP for North Norfolk, chaired a session on bolstering public health evidence. Lamb is a former minister of state for Care and Support at the Department of Health and the chair of the Science and Technology Select Committee. He is leading an inquiry into e-cigarettes that is looking into their effectiveness as a smoking cessation tool and their impact on the health of the nation.
One of the panellists made the point that what was not needed was more research. What was needed was responsible research and the dissemination of the results of that research.
And at this point, as the one-day conference wound down, it was back to where it started: the challenge of addressing misinformation.
A report on the conference is due to be included in a future issue of Vapor Voice magazine.
Tag: United Kingdom
London vaping conference
The price of Brexit
One of the negative impacts for the UK economy of leaving the EU will fall on the UK cigarette market, which is now completely reliant on cigarette imports from Europe, according to GlobalData.
‘Without a home supplied product any tariffs applied to imported goods between the UK and EU as a result of Brexit will see massive cigarette retail price increases for UK consumers, leading to volume declines of as much as 21 percent by 2021,’ said GlobalData, which describes itself as a ‘data and analytics company’.
‘The average pack price (20s) is likely to increase by more than £3, from £9.60 to £12.74 based on estimates from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD calculations assume that the UK will introduce tariffs of 70 percent on cigarette imports in line with World Trade Organization (WTO) guidelines.
William Grimwade, consumer analyst at GlobalData said the UK’s top six sources for imported cigarettes were all in the EU: Poland, Germany, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania and the Netherlands. “The volume of cigarette imports will likely increase anyway over the next few years as stores of domestically produced cigarettes run out,” he said. “We forecast that the impact of Brexit will see UK cigarette volume sales fall by as much as a fifth by 2021.”
In its note, GlobalData said the decline could be even more significant if the UK Government took further action on public health concerns by forcing prices up even further.
‘A recent global study on tobacco consumption suggests global price rises of 50 percent could save more than 60 million lives, and so international opinion is likely to support further cigarette price rises,’ the note said. ‘This means that the UK Gov’t is unlikely to take any action to mitigate against Brexit-induced price rises on cigarettes.’
Grimwade said that the return of duty-free tobacco sales to travellers between the UK and the EU would likely coincide with a large reduction in the number of cigarettes they could bring back to the UK. “The new limit is expected to be somewhere around 200 cigarettes instead of the current 800, which will make it even more difficult for UK consumers to find cheaper supplies of cigarettes,” he said.Smoke screen
The smokers’ lobby group Forest has said that attempts to reduce the amount of smoking on television and in films would be a ‘gross attack on artistic freedom’ and a ‘worrying attempt to rewrite history’.
According to a submission to the UK’s Select Committee on Science and Technology, ASH and the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies say that smoking on television and in films encourages children to start smoking.
But Simon Clark (pictured), director of Forest, said that films and television should reflect the world as it was and is, not as prohibitionists would like it to be.
“Directors must be allowed to portray characters as they see fit, not according to regulations imposed on them by government and unelected NGOs,” he said.
“Many Oscar-listed films that contain smoking, like ‘Darkest Hour’, are set in a period of history when a large majority of adults smoked. Even today one in six adults smoke.
“Prohibiting or excessively restricting the depiction of smoking would be a gross attack on artistic freedom and a worrying attempt to rewrite history.”
Clark said it was ludicrous to suggest there was a causal link between smoking on screen and children taking up smoking.
“To put this in perspective, smoking rates among young people in the UK are at their lowest ever level,” he said.
“The anti-smoking industry is manufacturing a sense of alarm that is out of all proportion to reality.”History in the making
A panel event in London, England, yesterday proved the adage that prediction is difficult – especially about the future.
The event, which was staged by the New Statesman magazine in association with Philip Morris International and chaired by Anna Hodgekiss, a freelance health/medical journalist and media consultant, set out to address the question: How long until smoking is history [in England]?
But given that all of the panellists – and possibly most of the 70 guests drawn from the ranks of parliament, the tobacco and cigarette industry, public health, public affairs, think tanks and professional services – seemed to support a harm-reduction rather than a quit-or-die policy, the debate turned largely on how smokers could be encouraged to switch to lower-risk products, such as vapor devices and oral tobacco products.
Nevertheless, Nick Fitzpatrick, an economist and consultant with Frontier Economics, which last year produced a report for PMI entitled: Working towards a smoke-free England, presented some of the findings from that report, one of which had it that the UK government would meet its smoke-free target of reducing the prevalence of smoking in England to five percent by 2040 given the continuation of current taxation policies and regulatory interventions. Fitzpatrick added that the target could be met by 2029 if a number of criteria were fulfilled, including increasing rapidly the number of smokers switching to smoke-free alternatives, such as e-cigarettes.
But these predictions were less important than the debate that they stirred – a debate that PMI has been encouraging since 2016 and one that, while based on an English experience, had universal echoes.
The panellists seemed to agree that there were too many unknowns to predict with any accuracy when smoking might end in England, But there was general agreement that vapor products had made a major step in the direction of encouraging smokers to quit and that they could make a further contribution given that they were the subject of sensible taxation policies that reflected their health impact, sensible, relevant regulation that was not simply moved over from tobacco regulation, and product improvement and innovation.
It would be necessary also to ensure that lower-risk messages were communicated to both smokers and the health care professionals who advised them, many of whom were still reluctant to talk with smokers about using vapor devices, even when those smokers had exhausted other methods of quitting.
The debate threw up the question of what it meant for smoking to be eliminated, and the idea that elimination would have been achieved once the smoking prevalence had been reduced to five percent was questioned. Panellist Mark Littlewood, the director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, pointed out that a five percent threshold, more widely applied, would mean that heroin was not used in the UK. Littlewood pointed out also that the rate of success in encouraging people to quit would be governed in part by a law of diminishing returns as the number of people still smoking was boiled down to a hard core of smokers.
One complicating factor in getting smokers to move to vapor devices was seen as the fact that smokers have different needs. Sarah Jakes, the chair of the New Nicotine Alliance and one of the panellists, told the event that she had switched to a vapor device even though it had not been her intention to do so. She was a smoker who decided to try e-cigarettes so that she could vape while in her car, but she had found that she liked the device to the point where she switched over completely. Littlewood, on the other hand, admitted that he had been unable to find a satisfactory substitute, and while he found heat-not-burn products better than e-cigarettes, he kept drifting back to traditional cigarettes. And another panellist, Dr. Roger Henderson, a general practitioner and smoking cessation expert, in a chilling intervention, told how some diabetics would choose smoking over their legs.
One interesting side issue had to do with the sympathy demonstrated for smokers who did not want to quit or could not quit. Although Henderson was passionate in his opposition to smoking and just as passionate in his support for harm reduction, he believes that in the end a smoker has to decide for herself what she does. If a smoker fully understood the risks she was taking and if she knew what cessation help was available to her but still decided to keep smoking, it was not for other people to tell her how to live her life.Vaping forum scheduled
The growth of the UK’s vaping industry will be the subject of a business-to-business conference scheduled to be held in London later this month.
The event, Going for Growth, which is being organized by the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA), is due to be held on April 23, at the King’s Fund, a health charity that, among other activities, hosts health care events.
A UKVIA press note issued yesterday said the event was being organized at an exciting time for the industry, with Public Health England having reiterated its conviction that vaping represents one of the best ways to quit smoking and a positive public health opportunity.
The note said the main topics of the discussion were set to include:- The regulatory landscape, chaired by Mark Pawsey MP (pictured), chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for E-Cigarettes;
- The role of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries in the sector, chaired by Gareth Johnson MP;
- The future of the category in the grocery trade, chaired by Tim Phillips from ECIgIntelligence
- The public health case for e-cigarettes, chaired by the Rt Hon Norman Lamb MP, chair of the Science and Technology Select Committee and a former minister for health.
The event will include the unveiling of the world’s first smart-vaping product, developed by the event’s headline sponsor, AYR. The device is said to be unique because it is the first of its kind that can monitor its own condition and let users know when a replacement is due. It refills and recharges automatically and shows how much a user has vaped during a single session.
“This is our inaugural conference after launching UKVIA nearly two years ago,” John Dunne, UKVIA board member, was quoted as saying. “Since then, there has been significant growth which reflects the strong performance of the sector.
“This event will bring together a range of stakeholders – from manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers to industry analysts, health professionals and political figureheads – to participate in thought-provoking discussions and debate around the opportunities for and barriers to growth in the future.”
More information is available at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ukvia-vaping-industry-forum-2018-going-for-growth-tickets-41700801219.Uniting around e-cigs
Members of the UK’s lower and upper houses are due to congregate outside the Palace of Westminster today to call on Parliament to set an example by opening its doors to vaping.
The members of the two houses will be led by Mark Pawsey (pictured), MP for Rugby and chairperson of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for E-Cigarettes, in supporting the launch of VApril, a nation-wide campaign aimed at encouraging the UK’s seven million smokers to switch to vaping, which is now seen by many people as one of the best ways to break the smoking habit.
The campaign is being organized by the UK Vaping Association (UKVIA) and fronted by Christian Jessen, who is a medical doctor, television presenter and writer.
“Vaping is now recognised as one of the best ways to quit smoking and therefore presents a major opportunity to make a significant and positive impact on the public health of the nation,” Pawsey was quoted as saying in a press note put out by the UKVIA. “Yet only one in 10 people understand the relative minor risk of vaping compared to smoking.
“Even in our own Parliament vapers are treated the same as smokers, forced into outdoor areas far removed from their places of work. It is time we practice what we preach and make Parliament ‘vape friendly’. That is why we are seeking to change the rules in Parliament so we can set an example to the public and businesses across the country.”
Meanwhile, Jessen said that, according to a recent report by Public Health England (PHE), e-cigarettes might be contributing to at least 20,000 successful new quits per year – with the industry estimating this figure to be much higher.
“But as a doctor it’s disappointing to hear that an estimated 40 percent of smokers still haven’t even tried vaping.
“I’m delighted to be joining forces with the UK Vaping Industry Association to launch VApril. VApril is all about helping more smokers to make a successful and permanent switchover. I personally believe vaping has overwhelming potential to help smokers break their habit, and this is important because stopping the habit is the single most significant step that people can make to improve their health. We hope that smokers across the UK will put down their cigarettes for a month, take the VApril Challenge and give themselves the best chance of quitting smoking for good.”
Smokers are being encouraged to take the VApril challenge across the UK by dropping into vaping masterclasses being provided by specialist vaping stores during April. They will receive a free guide – Vape to Break the Smoking Habit – to help them transition from smoking to vaping and give them the best chance of a successful quit.
More information is available at: www.vapril.org.Research has real bite
A study undertaken by British American Tobacco has shown that teeth exposed to cigarette smoke over a period of two weeks became ‘very discolored very quickly’, whereas teeth exposed to e-cigarette vapor or vapor from glo, a heat-not-burn product, did not. After two weeks of almost continuous exposure, the teeth exposed to vapor were almost indistinguishable from teeth that were not exposed to anything at all.
‘Smokers get “stains”, turning teeth from a healthy-looking white to an unhealthy-looking yellow/brown color,’ BAT said in a press note. ‘Although this staining is commonly referred to as nicotine staining, it is not caused by nicotine, but by tar in smoke.
‘As part of a wider study on oral health, scientists at British American Tobacco studied discoloration in teeth. A prototype Vype e-cigarette and a tobacco heating product, glo, were assessed for tooth discoloration and the impact on teeth compared to that of cigarette smoke.
‘A puffing robot was used to puff on the products to produce smoke and vapor. In each case, the smoke or vapor was collected onto a filter pad (Figure 2B) and then a solvent was used to extract the solid material from the filter pad. The impact of the extracted material (extract) on tooth discoloration was then tested using cows’ teeth.
‘Cows’ teeth are routinely used in laboratory experiments in lieu of human teeth. They are used for example to test oral hygiene products like toothpaste and mouthwash.
‘The teeth were prepared by polishing them using fine sandpaper to create a surface more like that of human teeth. The teeth were then incubated at body temperature in human saliva to create an environment mimicking that in the human mouth. This incubation results in the creation of the so-called pellicle layer on the teeth, which is the smooth film you can feel on your teeth when you rub your tongue over them. It is the normal protein layer that forms on teeth when certain molecules in saliva bond to the tooth enamel.
‘The teeth were incubated in an oven at body temperature and exposed to the various extracts from the cigarette smoke or e-cig or THP vapor. Some teeth were also incubated in solvent with no extract at all to act as a control/blank.
‘After the first day, the teeth exposed to the smoke extract started to change colour and over the course of 14 days, these teeth got darker and darker in color. Even with the naked eye, the color changes with the cigarette extract could be easily seen after one day. The exact color change was also measured in the laboratory using a special camera that can detect tiny changes in hue. In contrast to teeth exposed to smoke those exposed to e-cigarette or THP vapor exhibited minimal change in color, similar to untreated teeth.’
These results were presented on Saturday at the annual conference of the American Association for Dental Research in Florida, US.Vaping masterclasses
A nationwide awareness and education campaign is due to be rolled out by the vaping sector across the UK in April.
VApril, which is being organised by the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA), will be fronted by Christian Jessen, who is a medical doctor, television presenter and writer.
‘The initiative comes on the back of Public Health England’s (PHE) recent review into vaping which reinforced that it was 95 percent less harmful than smoking and revealed that it was one of the most successful ways to quit conventional cigarettes,’ UKVIA said in a press note.
‘The campaign will call upon the country’s smokers to Take the VApril Challenge, which will involve vaping masterclasses at specialist retail stores for smokers to learn about the different products and nicotine strengths that are best suited to a successful quit. As part of the initiative, the UKVIA has published a special education guide – Vaping to break the Smoking Habit.’
“I am always amazed and disappointed to hear that we still have seven million smokers in this country and, according to PHE, around 40 percent of them have never tried vaping,” Jessen was quoted as saying. “Furthermore, more than half of the population don’t realise that vaping is a fraction of the risk of smoking.
“That’s why I’m a committed supporter of the idea of a national vaping awareness campaign such as VApril to encourage smokers to take the first steps to quitting their habit. Already some 1.5 million vapers have given up smoking altogether, but more education is needed to ensure this figure keeps growing.”
John Dunne, a director of UKVIA, said VApril would be the largest campaign ever run by the vaping industry and reflected how far the sector had come in a relatively short time. “The challenge for the industry, government and the public health community is to get across the message that e-cigarettes are a very small risk compared to smoking and that nearly three million smokers are now vaping, with a significant number having switched over altogether,” he said. “VApril aims to be the starting point for more smokers to quit their habit.”
The VApril campaign has its own website at: www.vapril.org.Transforming tobacco now
The emphasis was on ‘transforming tobacco’ when British American Tobacco yesterday published its Annual Report and Sustainability Report.
Both of the reports are entitled ‘Transforming Tobacco’, reflecting ‘the company’s commitment to transform tobacco by offering an unrivalled suite of potentially reduced-risk products that address the varied preferences of today’s consumers’.
In a note posted on its website, BAT said the reports clearly set out its ambition to lead and shape the transformation of the industry by achieving a triple win: ‘for consumers – who will be offered a range of potentially safer choices; for society – who could benefit from real progress in tobacco harm reduction; and for shareholders – who will own an even more sustainable and profitable business’.
The note said that BAT’s existing combustible portfolio was now complemented by a wide range of potentially reduced-risk products, including next generation products (NGPs), comprising vapor and tobacco heating products (THPs), as well as oral tobacco and nicotine products, such as snus and moist snuff.
“We recognise that the tobacco and nicotine industry has entered a dynamic period of change and we are committed to leading this transformation,” chief executive, Nicandro Durante, was quoted as saying. “Increased public health awareness, new societal attitudes and rapid developments in new technologies have all combined to create a unique opportunity to accelerate the delivery of our long-held ambition to provide our consumers with less risky tobacco and nicotine choices.
“These two important reports out today, clearly outline our strategy to transform tobacco by building our business based on outstanding products, informed consumer choice and a potentially reduced-risk portfolio. Put simply: more choice, more innovation, less risk.”
BAT said its commitment to the important role these potentially reduced-risk products would play was reflected in its aims to generate more than £1 billion revenue from NGPs in 2018 and to increase this figure to £5 billion by 2022.
Since 2012, together with Reynolds American Inc., BAT had invested about US$2.5 billion in developing and commercialising its range of NGPs.
“Transforming tobacco isn’t just about harm reduction, though,” said Durante. “To respond to evolving challenges and opportunities, we need to continue to focus on the other key areas of our sustainability agenda, including sustainable agriculture and farmer livelihoods, and corporate behaviour. These are fundamental imperatives that set the foundations for our business for years to come.”Evidence building
A clinical study conducted by scientists at British American Tobacco has revealed that when smokers switch completely from cigarettes to the heated-tobacco product, glo, their exposure to certain cigarette smoke toxicants is significantly reduced, in some cases to levels comparable to those seen in smokers who quit smoking completely.
In a press note issued today, BAT said these results added to evidence suggesting that glo may ‘have the potential to be substantially reduced risk compared to smoking conventional cigarettes’.
‘Because glo vapor has lower levels of toxicants than cigarette smoke, it should in principle expose consumers to much less toxicants,’ the note said. ‘The results of this study indicate that this is indeed the case.’
The clinical study was conducted in Belfast, UK, over seven days and involved 150 people, all of whom were smokers for at least three years prior to enrolment.
‘For the first two days, study participants continued to smoke as normal and their urine was collected to measure levels of chemicals. Blood and breath were also collected for analysis,’ the note said.
‘For the next five days, participants were randomly allocated to either continue smoking, switch to using a THP [tobacco heating product] or quit smoking. Urine, blood and breath samples were again collected for analysis.
‘Exposure to certain smoke toxicants was determined by measuring the levels of certain chemicals in the urine. These could be the toxicants themselves or their metabolites – which is what the body breaks it down into – called biomarkers of exposure. Toxicants measured included those identified by the World Health Organization as being of concern in cigarette smoke.’
The results were said to have shown that the concentration of certain chemicals in the urine was reduced in smokers who switched to glo. In some cases, these reductions were the same as those observed in the smokers who quit.
“These results are very encouraging,’ said Dr. James Murphy, head of reduced risk substantiation at BAT. “The next step will be to determine whether this reduction in exposure translates to a reduced biological effect, and in turn a reduction in adverse health effects for those smokers who switch completely to glo.”
BAT said that future clinical studies would test for markers of biological effect, such as cholesterol levels or heart rate – measurements that give an indication of general health. A reduction in biomarkers of biological effect could suggest that a reduction in exposure is having a positive impact on reducing the adverse health risks of smokers who switch completely.
“The results of one test are important,” said Murphy, “but it is the combination of the results of many different tests that start to give us a real feel for the bigger picture and the potential for glo to be reduced risk compared to a conventional cigarette.”
The results of the clinical study are being presented today at the annual conference of the Society of Toxicology in San Antonio, Texas, US.
