Vape APPG funded by industry
Addiction Economy Thought for Today - Parliament discusses the smoking and vaping bill today. A helpful Q&A from ASH about the issues in the bill here if interested, tho it skates over a few things imv.
https://lnkd.in/eY7kvbRU
For the smoking part - the sale is criminalised, not the smoking; the public is in favour; the black market on cigs did not increase with the age move from 16 to 17, and may be controllable-ish with enforcement - it shrank from 22% of the market in 2000 to 11% in 2022; it's a free vote, with most MPs in favour.
What still astonishes me, and was the reason why we started this project, is that in the UK alone smoking still kills 64,000 people a year. That's about 160 747 planes crashing each year. How on earth is that allowed to happen and how can anything that tries to stop this be considered controversial!
The bill would also give powers to create secondary regulation to ban disposable vapes, restrictions of packing and display and sale to children.
So the vaping industry has been busy ahead of this. Good reporting below in The Independent.
They've set up a new 'Responsible Vaping' All Parliamentary Group, funded by the industry. This replaces the previous APPG on vaping which was disbanded and its integrity questioned by the standards watchdog. With that APPG the secretariat was the vaping trade association.
The last two chairs of that APPG accepted the 'Most Supportive Parliamentarian Award' from the Industry and the current vice chair Mary Glindon was nominated last year! All of them have been criticised for closeness to industry, inappropriate sponsored events in parliament (which wouldn't be allowed for cigs but is for vapes) and accepting hospitality from cig and vape companies.
Vice chair Adam Afriyie MP for Richmond, forgot to mention his wife's shares in Elite Growth, a disposable vape company and is also now on its advisory board.
So this sort of thing greases the slippery slope which allows vapes to become a mainstream new addiction in society all under the guise of helping smokers. They do help smokers but most quit without vapes, and it also still leave them with a nicotine addiction.
Joe Woof currently researching the vape ban in Australia points to research there that kids who vape are up to three times more likely to take up smoking than non vapers, 13% of young vapers go on to smoke.
Increasing evidence shows that vapes are very harmful to lungs and of course everyone would be going ape about this if cigs didn't kill so many people.
https://lnkd.in/eqF6uVHb