Today UK Health Minister Neil O’Brian announced the United Kingdom will further double down on backing vaping as a smoking cessation tool by encouraging one million smokers to swap cigarettes with free vape starter kits, provide financial incentives to pregnant women to quit smoking, and introduce mandatory information sheet inserts into cigarettes packs.
The World Vapers’ Alliance, a global vaping consumer organisation, praises the UK government’s commitment. These measures will strengthen the UK’s position as one of the tobacco harm reduction champions worldwide, says Michael Landl, Director of the World Vapers’ Alliance:
“The UK is a smoking-cessation champion and harm reduction leader worldwide. Smoking rates have fallen by more than 29% in the last decade since vaping became widely popular, and the government must double down on embracing vaping. The broad adoption of vaping due to strong political backing and sound medical evidence is why smoking rates decrease faster than in other countries. Further helping smokers to switch will accelerate the UK’s success story.”
Politico recently reported that some ministers were considering imposing higher taxes on vaping products, and enforcing new regulations on packaging and flavours in response to the Khan Review published last year. This would endanger the progress achieved by fully embracing vaping for smokers.
“It is great news for public health that Health Minister O’Brian withstands the pressure from anti-vaping groups, who ignore scientific facts and the success of the UK’s approach. Caving-in would be a disaster for smokers and current vapers. Higher taxation of vaping products and equalling vaping with smoking, rather than a risk-based regulation, would push many vapers back to smoking and not help current smokers to switch to a less harmful alternative”, added Landl.
Compared to the EU’s 25% smoking rate, the UK is on the right track and these new policy measures would be a further push in the right direction. Earlier this year, the UK was crowned as one of the tobacco harm reduction champions by the World Vapers’ Alliance in the Tobacco Harm Reduction Policy Primer.
ACS chief executive James Lowman said: “We strongly welcome this course of action from government, harnessing the potential for vaping to accelerate the decline in smoking rates, and it’s encouraging that the government are committing new resource and some innovative approaches to make this happen.
“We are encouraged by Ministers recognising the need to ensure that the vaping market operates properly, which means that only legal product reaches retailers and consumers, and only adults can buy these products. The stronger focus on enforcement, backed by greater resources at a local level, is the right way to achieve this. Our members will welcome and embrace more enforcement activity and our guidance, on recognising legal products and implementing the widely recognised and robust Challenge25 policy to avoid under age sales, is freely available for all retailers to use.
“We will continue to work with the Department for Health & Social Care and Trading Standards departments to make this approach work.”
Minister O’Brien has also launched a call for evidence on youth vaping which aims to reduce the number of children accessing and using vape products and explore how the Government can act on this.
ACS has developed comprehensive guidance which includes everything that retailers need to know to recognise legitimate products, as well as the age verification policies that should be in place to ensure that products are only sold to those who are legally allowed to purchase them. The full guidance is available here.
