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** 30 April 2024
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** UK
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** NHS spent more than £1m helping smokers quit in 2023 (#2)
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** Warning to smokers following bedroom blaze (#1)
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** Scotland: (#4) Dunfermline kids are 'worse' for gambling and smoking (#4)
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** Healthy lifestyle may offset genetics by 60% and add five years to life, study says (#5)
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** International
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** Teenagers who vape ‘at higher risk from lead and uranium poisoning’ (#6)
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** Minneapolis smokers to pay some of the highest cigarette prices in US with a $15 per-pack minimum (#3)
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** UK
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** NHS spent more than £1m helping smokers quit in 2023

The NHS spent more than £1 million helping smokers in Hampshire quit last year, new figures show. It comes as the House of Commons voted in favour of the Government's bill to ban the sale of tobacco products to anyone born after January 1, 2009.

NHS figures show £1,614,300 was spent on NHS Stop Smoking Services in Hampshire in 2023. The funding covers the delivery of services alongside the cost of pharmacotherapies such as nicotine replacement therapy.

Across England's local authorities, £37.9 million was spent helping people stop smoking through the NHS services.

Policy and public affairs manager at Action on Smoking and Health, John Waldron, said: "Stop smoking services have been underfunded for many years and support a quarter of the numbers they did in 2010. As a central plank of our efforts to help smokers quit, this has long been unacceptable."

Mr Waldron added the Government's investment of £70 million into the services, alongside its "bold commitment" to phase out the sale of tobacco to those born after 2008 is welcome.

He said: "Through creating a smoke-free generation and supporting current smokers to quit, we are on the path to ending smoking in this country for good."

The most recent data for April to December shows that 2,382 (61 per cent) of the 3,923 people in Hampshire who set a date to quit smoking were successful.

Across England, 54 per cent of the 133,000 who set a date were able to give it up.

Source: Hampshire Chronicle, 29 April 2024

See a selection of local coverage of this story below:

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** More than two-thirds of smokers in Doncaster were able to quit with NHS support ([link removed])
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** NHS spent more than £150k helping smokers quit in Bedford ([link removed])
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** NHS spent hundreds of thousands of pounds helping smokers in Barnet quit last year ([link removed])
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** NHS spent hundreds of thousands of pounds helping smokers in Milton Keynes quit last year, new figures show ([link removed])
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** NHS spent hundreds of thousands of pounds helping smokers in Nottinghamshire quit last year ([link removed])
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** Warning to smokers following bedroom blaze

Firefighters have warned smokers to stub out their cigarettes properly after a bedroom caught alight.

Crews were called to the blaze on Falbro Crescent, Hadleigh, Essex, at about 15:20 BST on Sunday. The county's fire service said the family were all downstairs and able to exit safely when they heard smoke alarms going off.

"We'd like to highlight why it's so important to have working smoke alarms," said watch manager Grant Jones, from Leigh fire station.

"If you're a smoker, please make sure all cigarettes are properly stubbed out before you leave them, as we often see embers start fires," he said.

"Make sure you've got at least one working smoke alarm on every level of your home and that you test them regularly."

Source: BBC News, 29 April 2024
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** Scotland: Dunfermline kids are 'worse' for gambling and smoking

Young people have poorer mental health and gamble and smoke more than their counterparts elsewhere in Fife, a new report has indicated.

Results of a survey on health and wellbeing completed by school pupils across Fife has highlighted areas where Dunfermline was rated 'worse' than other areas.

Highlighted to members of the City of Dunfermline area committee, local youngsters were deemed to have worse mental health than in other parts of Fife, particularly around body image and resilience.

They were higher numbers who reported gambling – in betting shops and online – while there was a greater percentage of young people in Dunfermline smoking between one and six cigarettes a week.

A report to councillors said: "Gathering the information is especially important, at this time, to help form an accurate picture of young people’s wellbeing after the pandemic and to help support their recovery."

Source: Dunfermline Press, 29 April 2024
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** Healthy lifestyle may offset genetics by 60% and add five years to life, study says

A healthy lifestyle may offset the impact of genetics by more than 60% and add another five years to your life, according to the first study of its kind.

It is well established that some people are genetically predisposed to a shorter lifespan. It is also well known that lifestyle factors, specifically smoking, alcohol consumption, diet and physical activity, can have an impact on longevity.

However, until now there has been no investigation to understand the extent to which a healthy lifestyle may counterbalance genetics.

Findings from several long-term studies suggest a healthy lifestyle could offset effects of life-shortening genes by 62% and add as much as five years to your life. The results were published in the journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.

The study involved 353,742 people from the UK Biobank and showed that those with a high genetic risk of a shorter life have a 21% increased risk of early death compared with those with a low genetic risk, regardless of their lifestyle.

Meanwhile, people with unhealthy lifestyles have a 78% increased chance of early death, regardless of their genetic risk, researchers from Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China and the University of Edinburgh found.

The study added that having an unhealthy lifestyle and shorter lifespan genes more than doubled the risk of early death compared with people with luckier genes and healthy lifestyles.

The “optimal lifestyle combination” for a longer life was found to be “never smoking, regular physical activity, adequate sleep duration and healthy diet”.

The study followed people for 13 years on average, during which time 24,239 deaths occurred. People were grouped into three genetically determined lifespan categories including long (20.1%), intermediate (60.1%) and short (19.8%), and three lifestyle score categories including favourable (23.1%), intermediate (55.6%) and unfavourable (21.3%).

Matt Lambert, a senior health information officer at the World Cancer Research Fund, said: “This new research shows that, despite genetic factors, living a healthy lifestyle, including eating a balanced nutritious diet and keeping active, can help us live longer.”

Source: The Guardian, 30 April 2024

See also: Bian Z, Wang L, Fan R, et al, Genetic predisposition, modifiable lifestyles, and their joint effects on human lifespan: evidence from multiple cohort studies ([link removed]) , BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, April 2024
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** International
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** Teenagers who vape ‘at higher risk from lead and uranium poisoning’

Teenagers who vape a lot may be increasing their risk of exposure to lead and uranium, harming brain and organ development, research suggests.

Findings published in the BMJ Group’s Tobacco Control emphasise the need for tougher rules and prevention efforts aimed at the young.

The researchers used responses to the Popular Assessment of Tobacco and Health (Path) Youth Study of Americans aged between 13 and 17, from December 2018 to November 2019.

Two hundred teenagers who vaped were included in their analysis, submitting urine samples to be tested for heavy metals, including cadmium, lead and uranium.

The teenagers were categorised as occasional vapers, meaning fewer than six days out of 30, intermittent (six-19 days a month), or frequent (more than 20 days a month).

Levels of lead in the children’s urine were 40 per cent higher among intermittent vapers, and 30 per cent higher among frequent vapers compared with the occasional vaping group.

Levels of uranium found in their urine were twice as high among frequent vapers when compared with the occasional ones.

The scientists said that their research had limitations: the vapers were not compared with non-vapers, and the urine was measured only once. However, the findings showed that vaping may increase exposure to metals.

Professor Lion Shahab, of the UCL Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group, said: “This is a well-conducted study underscoring the need to carefully monitor exposure in e-cigarette users and highlights the fact that e-cigarettes are not risk-free, and therefore should not be used by people who have never smoked, particularly adolescents.”

Source: The Times, 30 April 2024

Editorial note: See below the full quote from Prof Lion Shahab which gives important context for the study:

“This study confirms previous work using the same dataset that e-cigarette users are exposed to some heavy metals, showing an increase in lead (though not cadmium) in the urine of US adolescents who exclusively used e-cigarettes intermittently (6 to 19 days in the last month) or frequently (20+ days) compared with those using e-cigarettes occasionally (1 to 5 days). The study also found an increase in the levels of uranium in occasional vs frequent users and in those using sweet compared with other flavours.”

“This is a well-conducted study underscoring the need to carefully monitor exposure in e-cigarette users and highlights the fact that e-cigarettes are not risk free, and therefore should not be used by people who have never smoked, particularly adolescents. However, these findings also need to be seen in context.

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** Uranium specifically has many different important sources of exposure (including food, water connected to geographic location), which were not controlled for in this analysis. Further, previous work has not found differences in uranium exposure between non-users and users of e-cigarettes nor detected uranium in e-cigarette aerosol, suggesting this finding may be explained by other factors.
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** While lead has been found in e-cigarette aerosol (but again there are other important sources of exposure), the observed values reported here, even in frequent e-cigarette users (0.2 ng/mg creatinine), are below typical reference values from the general population and in line with previously reported data from the same study for adult non-users (around 0.35 ng/mg creatinine). Nonetheless, it is important to note that no level of lead exposure is safe.
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** No control group (i.e., adolescents without any e-cigarette use) was included in the analysis.
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“This study therefore cannot tell us anything about absolute increase in exposure to heavy metals from e-cigarette use in this population, only about relative exposure among less and more frequent e-cigarette users. Given that heavy metal exposure is mostly driven by the type of device used, future studies should investigate whether there are any meaningful differences between different e-cigarette types to inform regulators, e.g., to curtail use of devices that expose users to more heavy metals. The relatively small sample size in this study meant that this issue could not be investigated.

“Lastly, as is the case for most biomarker studies, it is difficult to translate these results into clinically meaningful effects. However, on the basis of such studies we know that e-cigarettes expose users to much lower levels of harmful substances than cigarettes but to higher levels than fresh air, so the best advice remains: if you smoke, vaping is much safer; if you don’t smoke, don’t vape.”

See also: Kochvar A, Hao G, Dai HD, Biomarkers of metal exposure in adolescent e-cigarette users: correlations with vaping frequency and flavouring ([link removed]) , Tobacco Control, April 2024

Science Media Centre - Expert reaction to observational study of lead and uranium levels in urine of teen vapers ([link removed])
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** Minneapolis smokers to pay some of the highest cigarette prices in US with a $15 per-pack minimum

Smokers in Minneapolis will pay some of the highest cigarette prices in the country after the City Council voted unanimously Thursday to impose a minimum retail price of $15 per pack to promote public health.

The ordinance not only sets a floor price. It prevents smokers and retailers from getting around it by prohibiting price discounts and coupons, which several tobacco companies circulate online to lure customers and reinforce brand loyalty. The minimum price also applies to four-packs of cigars. Distribution of free samples is prohibited.

Consumer prices are expected to run even higher after taxes are figured in. While retailers will get to keep the extra money paid by smokers, the higher prices are expected to snuff out at least some of their sales.

The minimum price will be effective as soon as Mayor Jacob Frey signs the measure, which he's expected to do within the next few days.

“I’m excited that this council is taking this public health crisis seriously because that’s what it is,” said the author of the ordinance, Council Member LaTrisha Vetaw.

Source: abc News, 25 April 2024
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ASH Daily News is a digest of published news on smoking-related topics. ASH is not responsible for the content of external websites. ASH does not necessarily endorse the material contained in this bulletin.

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