Tag: Smoking

World No Tobacco Day – how to get where we need to be?

Nick HopkinsonThe path to a smokefree generation demands decisive action and innovative strategies. To mark World No Tobacco Day, Professor Nick Hopkinson from the National Heart & Lung Institute (NHLI) offers his insights, drawing on years of dedicated research to suggest ways in which we can achieve this. 

Smoking is the leading preventable cause of premature disability and death; two out of three people who continue to smoke will die from a smoking-related disease. Ending this requires two things: First, ensuring that people don’t start to smoke in the first place; and second, supporting the more than six million people in the UK who still smoke to quit.

‘Stopping the start’ involves making smoking less appealing,less affordable, and less available to children and young people. A key step to creating a smokefree generation will be steadily raising the age of sale, ensuring that tobacco products can never legally be sold to people born on or after 1 January 2009. The General Election has paused the progress of this legislation, but the policy has enjoyed cross-party support, so is almost certain to become law. We can be confident that it will be effective – youth smoking rates fell when the age of sale in the UK was increased from 16 to 18 in 2007, and similarly where it has been increased to 21 in the US. The year-on-year increase will also prevent the tobacco industry from addicting people later in life.

(more…)

The future of smoking: why are young people still picking up the habit?

two hands snapping a cigeratte in half

The government is on course to miss its target of making England smoke free by 2030. Dr Charlotte Vrinten, Research Associate at the School of Public Health, highlights how this delay leads to thousands of adolescents taking up the habit in the meantime.

Tobacco smoking has been declining in the UK over the last decade, but there are still nearly 7 million people who smoke.  Smoking is one of the main avoidable causes of illness and early death, and costs the NHS £2.4 billion per year. In 2019, the government pledged to make England smokefree by 2030.  However, a recent independent review found that the government is on course to miss its 2030 target by seven years. (more…)

Why plain packaging for cigarettes does not increase illicit trade

Dr Anthony Laverty discusses new findings that quash the argument that plain cigarette packaging increases illicit tobacco trade.

Australia was the first country in the world to introduce standardised, or plain, packaging for cigarettes and tobacco. The move was the product of a long-running campaign from the public health community and meant that the packets are allowed no branding; just the product name in standard font, colour and size. Since Australia brought in these measures, the UK followed in 2017, as did Ireland and France, increasing the number of countries in the world which restrict one of the key avenues for the tobacco industry to advertise their products. (more…)

A smoke-free country: how will we get there?

The Government recently announced plans to create a smoke-free society by 2030 – Dr Nick Hopkinson outlines some of the steps towards achieving this ambition.

Tobacco smoking remains a huge public health issue. Although population smoking rates continue to fall – now down to 14.4% of adults – smoking is still responsible for around 100,000 deaths per year in the UK, and for around half the difference in life expectancy between rich and poor. Smoking rates are high in areas of deprivation, in people with mental health problems and among people who identify as LGBT.

The Government’s recent green paper, Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020’s, although in many areas light on detail, funding, delivery and ambition, does set out some important markers on smoking and some potentially interesting developments around funding tobacco control. (more…)

Can we trust the tobacco industry?

Image credit: Stanford Medical School

Originally published on Dr Nick Hopkinson’s blog and reproduced here with permission, this post looks at the Tobacco Industry’s dark history of appropriation and subversion of science.

“It ain’t no new thing” sang Gil Scott Heron in 1972, condemning the appropriation of black culture by white recording artists. A recent research paper published in Tobacco Control throws light on Tobacco Industry appropriation and subversion of science. Their goal, to prevent or delay measures which reduce their ability to market products that are among the leading causes of death worldwide (1). (more…)

Do we need to think differently about COPD?

COPD
The internal structure of the lungs by Dave Farnham (CC BY 4.0)

Ann Morgan, a PhD student at the National Heart and Lung Institute, gives us her thoughts on why smoking isn’t the only culprit behind the rise in COPD. 

The traditional view of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) is that it is a self-inflicted disease caused by smoking. However, it is increasingly likely that this description is something of an oversimplification. While still very much associated with smoking, clinicians and researchers alike are getting to grips with the reality that COPD is a more complex and heterogeneous disease than previously thought. We are also becoming more aware of the fact that it is a disease which rarely occurs in isolation. The vast majority of people who present with COPD have at least one other co-existing disease or condition, and around 50% have four or more accompanying chronic diseases or ‘comorbidities’. (more…)

Smoke and the burnout of muscles

Image: Shutterstock - SMOKE & THE BURNOUT OF MUSCLESFor World No Tabaco Day 2017, researchers from Imperial’s Muscle Lab provide an insight into how smoking takes its toll on our lung health. 

Smoking is a leading cause of preventable death and disease in the world. It is estimated that the society costs associated with smoking are approximately ₤12.9 billion a year, including the NHS cost of treating smoking related diseases and loss of productivity.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the major diseases caused by smoking. The disease ranks third among the leading causes of death worldwide. Around 1.2 million Britons suffer from the disease (Source: British Lung Foundation). The usual clinical picture is that of a smoker with symptoms that include shortness of breath and chronic cough. (more…)