The Ongoing Failure of UK Tobacco Control

In the run-up to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) eleventh conference of the Parties (COP11) meeting, the UK’s public health minister, Ashley Dalton, categorically stated that the country would stand up for tobacco harm reduction. Yet when the moment arrived, the delegation did nothing of the sort.

In its country statement during the opening plenary, the UK said it was “looking forward to the agenda item on forward-looking measures,” even though that agenda contained proposals that would have severely damaged vaping and other reduced-risk products. The delegation repeated the familiar line that “tobacco continues to kill more than 7 million people annually across the world and remains the greatest public health harm,” but then described how it was implementing measures under the Tobacco and Vapes Bill that would make it harder, not easier, for safer nicotine products to compete with cigarettes. Instead of defending harm reduction, the statement expressed “concerns around other emerging nicotine products.” From the outside, it looked less like leadership and more like deference to the WHO, with the UK seemingly more eager to boast about being the first to implement a generational tobacco ban than to stand up for the smokers who could benefit from innovation.

Once again, the UK failed to mention the government’s own stop-to-swap campaign during the plenary statement. Given the relentlessly hostile attitude toward nicotine at the meeting, one can only assume the delegation did not want to antagonise the FCTC administrators. But UK taxpayers are one of the treaty’s largest donors. It would be well within its rights to say that unless the FCTC’s ideological stance shifts, the UK reserves the right to review or withhold funding. Instead, it remained silent.

There was significant interference around the COP meeting, but it was not from “tobacco industry”. It was from the philanthropy industry mainlyBloomberg-funded groups. Yet neither the UK government nor Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) has called out NGOs or individuals for advancing talking points aligned with Bloomberg rather than with evidence-based public health principles. And this assumes(perhaps too generously) that the UK delegation was quietly opposing the most extreme anti-THR proposals behind the scenes. Considering the recent behaviour of UK tobacco-control organisations, one cannot take this for granted.

Public perceptions of vaping in the UK are now worsening at an alarming pace. A growing majority incorrectly believes vaping is as harmful or more harmful than smoking. ASH has acknowledged this trend in passing but has largely sat on its hands. Instead, it has watched the Tobacco and Vapes Bill progress through Parliament, a bill that promises to ban advertising for safer nicotine products, force them into plain packaging, hide them behind screens in shops, restrict flavours, and extend smoke-free legislation to vaping without any justification whatsoever.

ASH has also remained silent on the forthcoming tax on vapes, a tax that will double the price of most liquids and increase the cost by more than 300 percent for products typically purchased by lower-income smokers trying to quit. ASH routinely stresses that higher tobacco taxes reduce smoking, so they should agree that this new tax will have the same effect for harm reduction. It will deter smokers from switching by dramatically reducing the financial incentive.

ASH’s CEO, Hazel Cheeseman, recently told the BBC that “ensuring the penalties for selling illegal vapes corresponded with enforcement rules around the sale of traditional tobacco sent the right message.” But the message it actually sends is that vapes and cigarettes pose similar risks. It is inconceivable that this is not obvious to anyone working in tobacco control.

This contradiction has become absurd. The NHS advises smokers to switch to vaping. The government is distributing up to one million free vape kits to help smokers improve their health. Yet those same smokers are being told that soon there will be fewer places to vape, that products will be more expensive, harder to find, less appealing, and stripped of the advantages that currently make switching worthwhile.

ASH and other NGOs supported banning disposable vapes, and the entirely predictable resulthas been the rapid expansion of unregulated illegal markets. According to The Times, illicit disposables are now easily accessible, and a recent survey found that six percent of vapers went back to smoking after the ban. One of ASH’s favoured MPs even expressed enthusiasmfor a “proposed pre-filled pod ban amendment.” It doesn’t even exist, but that did not temper his excitement.

Crucially, ASH is a charity. On the Charity Commission register, it claims to “work to advance policies and measures that will help to prevent the addiction, disease and unnecessary premature death caused by smoking.” Yet in recent years, it has done nothing of the sort. Its actions, and inaction, have served only to obstruct the products most capable of reducing smoking-related harm.

The failure of UK tobacco control has become so comprehensive that a visitor from another planet might mistake these organisations for allies of the cigarette industry. There cannot be any other reason as to why they would they spend so much energy undermining the very alternatives that threaten combustible tobacco.

Martin Cullip is International Fellow at The Taxpayers Protection Alliance’s Consumer Center and is based in South London, UK.