Smoking - Cancer Research UK - Science Update blog

The tobacco industry’s role in smuggling needs scrutiny

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Chris Woodhall

The industry continues to have a role in tobacco smuggling

The taxman has come under fire in the past week, thanks to a new report from the National Audit Office that brands HM Revenue and Customs’ efforts to curb tobacco smuggling as “disappointing” and “too weak”.

The media spotlight fell – perhaps unfortunately – on the fact that the HMRC is ‘missing cigarette smuggling targets‘.

Unfortunate because, for us, the real headline – and indeed, the other significant focus of the report – is the tobacco industry’s continuing role in tobacco smuggling, which hinders efforts to tackle the illicit trade.

Helping people quit smoking, or not start, is a cornerstone of our work on cancer prevention. The reason is simple: tobacco is by far the UK’s single greatest cause of preventable illness and early death and causes a staggering one in four cancer deaths.

And as well as cheating the UK of tax revenue, tobacco smuggling undermines tax and pricing strategies that are an important part of the country’s strategy for reducing tobacco’s deadly toll.

In this post, we’ll look at recent trends and developments in tobacco smuggling, and see how industry’s claims about illicit trade should be taken with a very large pinch of salt.

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Licensing e-cigarettes: opportunities and risks

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Alison Cox

Electronic cigarettes are to be regulated as medicines

It’s been an interesting few days for smokers intent on stopping their habit.

Last week saw welcome new guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) – the first to recommend that licensed nicotine-containing products (NCPs) can be used to help people cut down on the amount they smoke (as well as to help them stop entirely).

Today the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has made its long-awaited announcement of its intention to license NCPs such as e-cigarettes, which have – until now – fallen outside both medical regulation and NICE’s guidance for quitting and cutting down.

This is good news. We’ve wanted to see e-cigarettes come under “light touch” regulation for some time – as it could ensure their safety, quality and effectiveness, restrict marketing that risks cross-promoting tobacco smoking, and stop them being sold to under-18s.

So we think it’s a great idea to bring e-cigarettes within MHRA licensing.

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Free yourself! World No Tobacco Day 2013

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Chris Woodhall

World No Tobacco Day Poster Today marks the World Health Organisation‘s (WHO) World No Tobacco Day – an annual event that has taken place since 1988.

This year, the theme is about sending a message to governments to ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. Tobacco advertising was banned in the UK many years ago but the sad fact is that only 19 countries – representing just six per cent of the world’s population – have comprehensive national bans.

This is despite the fact that the WHO international Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC) – a treaty that’s been signed by 168 countries worldwide – requires a comprehensive ban of all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.

Although the theme changes every year, the devastating reason for World No Tobacco Day remains the same:

Tobacco kills nearly six million people each year, of which more than 600,000 are non-smokers dying from breathing second-hand smoke

In this post, we explore recent international developments in the fight against tobacco. And we ask whether the UK is still ‘Setting the Standard’ for the rest of the world to follow, after a decade of significant progress in tobacco control.

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E-cigarettes – the unanswered questions

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Claire Knight

An e-cigarette

Five years ago you’d probably never heard of electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes. Now it seems you can’t open a newspaper – or go into a newsagent, supermarket or pharmacist – without seeing them advertised or on sale.

For smokers concerned about the toxic cocktail of cancer-causing substances in tobacco smoke, e-cigarettes – sometimes touted as a safer alternative to smoking – might initially sound like a Holy Grail. We’re determined to reduce the number of smoking-related cancers. If e-cigarettes can help reduce this toll, it’s crucial to public health that this avenue is properly explored to fully understand the benefits and risks of these devices.

There are widely differing responses to the replication of the act of smoking offered by e-cigarettes use, known as vaping. Some people see a unique opportunity to promote a mass switch to vaping that would avoid the massive health toll of smoking tobacco on the 1 in 5 adults smoking in the UK today. Others see e-cigarette as posing a great risk that would keep people too close to their cigarette habit, making a lapse back to smoking more likely.

Currently e-cigarettes are not regulated in the way that approved nicotine replacement therapies (NRT) such as patches and gum are. This means they haven’t undergone all the rigorous tests needed to ensure their safety and effectiveness.

We want to see ‘light touch’ regulation brought in, to ensure the products contents and delivery is monitored and consistent, they are not sold to under 18’s and that their marketing does not promote smoking itself.

The increasing popularity of e-cigarettes makes it crucial to answer questions about their impact – not just on the health of smokers who use them, but on non-smokers, ex-smokers, children and society as a whole.

That’s why we commissioned researchers at the University of Stirling to identify the unanswered questions and concerns around e-cigarettes, and look at the broader issue of tobacco ‘harm reduction’ – measures to reduce illness and death caused by tobacco use.

We’ve just published their report (pdf), and a summary has been published in the journal Tobacco Control). In this post, we’ll look in more detail at the questions and issues it raises.

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A sad day for public health – standard packs and the path ahead

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Chris Woodhall

The 2010 film The King’s Speech was a national triumph. So at Cancer Research UK we’re dismayed to have to report that we’re not exactly rolling out the red carpet for yesterday’s Queen’s Speech.

In fact, quite the opposite.

The Queen’s Speech – which outlined the Government’s focus for the next year – has, shockingly, left plans to put tobacco products in plain, standardised packaging, on the cutting room floor.

The government has thus failed to deliver on a policy that would help protect children from a product that has no safe level of consumption.

So today, nine months since its consultation closed in August 2012, we’re left hanging, still waiting for the government to make a clear statement of its intentions.

In that time more than 150,000 children have started smoking – the beginning of an addiction that kills half its long-term users.

In light of this disappointing decision, we wanted to outline, clearly and simply, which organisations support this measure. Also we thought it worth exposing the vested interests of its opponents. This is all worth knowing, because this fight isn’t over; this is not “The End”.

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A Queen’s Speech to speed up progress against cancer?

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Simon Kirkland

Today, the Queen set out the Government’s priorities for the next year

This morning the Queen opened the third session of the 2010-15 Parliament with a speech in the House of Lords.

Her speech was written by the Government, and outlined its legislative agenda for the upcoming parliamentary session (which will last roughly a year).

And over the next couple of days, both Peers in the House of Lords, and MPs in the House of Commons will debate its contents.

Cancer Research UK takes a great interest in the Government’s plans, and how we think they will affect cancer patients and research into the disease.

So what are the key points for us from this speech?

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Government must put children’s health before tobacco’s profits

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Alan Worsley

Children are lured by tobacco packaging

Next Wednesday, in a ceremony full of tradition and colour, the Queen marks the formal start of the parliamentary year.

This will include a speech that sets out the government’s agenda for the coming session, outlining proposed policies and legislation.

We’ve been urging the government to seize this opportunity to replace the slickly designed tobacco packaging with packs of uniform size, shape and colour.

But we’re very concerned by today’s newspaper reports that the government is backing away from including legislation in the speech.

We believe it’s a grave mistake to allow the current situation to continue.

The public consultation on the future of tobacco packaging closed in August 2012 and we’ve been impatiently waiting since then to hear what this government will do about this issue.

Impatiently waiting because every day the government delays taking action sees more than 500 under 16s being lured into smoking, an addiction that will kill half of all long term smokers.

Tens of thousands of our supporters have added their voice to our campaign to protect children from tobacco industry marketing, so we know the public backs this measure.

The evidence shows plain, standardised packs reduce the appeal of smoking, and experts from across the fields of health and law enforcement are fully behind the move.

You might wonder who could possibly oppose this measure. The answer is simple – the group with the most to lose, the tobacco industry and the groups they fund.

Because fewer smokers mean lower profits and less money in the bank for the industry.

If this government doesn’t act, the tobacco industry will get the green light to continue targeting our children with sophisticated and slick designs.

You may have also seen this Japan Tobacco International (JTI) ad popping up in national newspapers recently, part of the £2million advertising campaign that JTI are waging against the introduction of plain packaging.

Click to enlarge

We’ve written before about misleading and unsubstantiated ads from JTI, which have been banned by the Advertising Standards Agency.

When the tobacco industry is desperate enough to spend so much money on misleading the public, we know we must be on the right path. Private Eye magazine published its own spoof version of the above JTI ad, which we thought was too good not to share: