Debate on smokefree 2030 target, House of Commons, 20 June 2023

• Smoking is the single largest cause of preventable death and the biggest cause of cancer worldwide. As well as impacting upon health, smoking places a significant burden on the public purse, to the tune of £12.6 billion each year. Beyond the significant cost to the health and social care system, it also impacts the local economy through sick days and lost productivity.
• The LGA welcomes the Government’s ambition to be smoke free by 2030. Despite deep cuts to the public health grant, almost all local councils have sustained their support for smokers to quit and many have developed innovative approaches to reduce the harm of tobacco on their local communities.
• According to LGA analysis, overall projections across England show that the country is on track to reach below five per cent smoking prevalence by 2030, provided that trends continue in their current trajectory. Smoking prevalence is set to reach approximately 4.9 per cent by 2030 and reach negligible levels by 2040.
• While research has shown vaping poses a small fraction of the risks of smoking, it is deeply worrying that more and more children – who have never smoked – are starting vaping. The LGA welcomes work by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) on tackling youth vaping. The LGA strongly believes that vapes should only be used as an aid to quit smoking. We endorse the advice from England’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Chris Whitty: “If you smoke, vaping is much safer. If you don’t smoke, don’t vape.”
• To help stop children from being able to access vapes, the LGA believes that vapes should be in standardised packaging and kept out-of-sight behind the counter. It is also important that legal loopholes which mean it is not illegal to hand out free e-cigarettes to children are closed. Additionally, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) should liaise with other government departments dealing with other age-restricted products and align their policies/messages to stop confusion amongst consumers and businesses.
• Sanctions need to be reviewed and more robust measures should be introduced to tackle the significant number of retailers who persistently sell vapes to under-age children. Councils should be able to issue fixed penalty notices as prosecutions can be resource intensive, and consideration should be given to being able to issue fines on a scale in accordance with the issues identified, for example number of under-age sales, age of recipient, and the number of times the retailer broke the rules
• It is welcome that the Government is providing £3 million in new funding to trading standards, which will help share knowledge and intelligence around the country. However, this still falls a long way short of the funding needed. To help trading standards teams in the long term, the LGA continues to call on the Government to boost the future pipeline of qualified trading standards officers through a dedicated apprenticeship fund, investing in regional support networks, and enabling councils to recover more of the costs of running regulatory services.
• An area that is of growing concern in relation to vaping is the effect on the environment, particularly “disposable” vapes. The LGA believes that the ‘polluter pays’ principle should apply, and that e-cigarette manufacturers and vendors should be required to do more to ensure consumers dispose of their waste in a more environmentally friendly way.

In England, local government has had responsibility for stop smoking services and local tobacco control since 2013. Despite deep cuts to the public health grant over this period, almost all local councils have sustained their support for smokers to quit and many have developed innovative approaches to reduce the harm of tobacco on their local communities. Examples include:

• Camden and Islington’s stop smoking service
  
   
• Medway’s stop smoking service
  
   
• Coventry’s integrated lifestyle service
  
   
• The partnership between Durham County Council and the Tobacco Control Alliance
  
   
• The integration of community and NHS stop smoking services in Salford

Local councils have exploited their strengths to bring down local smoking rates. Their reach into communities has helped in tackling the stark inequalities that characterise the population of smokers, such as the stubbornly high smoking prevalence in low income and disadvantaged communities. Their relationships across communities have helped to build partnerships with the capacity to tackle the harms of tobacco on multiple fronts: supporting smokers to quit, communicating with local people to deter new smokers and encourage smokers to quit, reducing the illicit trade, creating smoke-free public spaces, and promoting harm reduction approaches.

Smoking remains the leading preventable cause of ill health and mortality in England. Councillors and officers recognise the harm that smoking inflicts on their communities and the importance of continuing to drive down smoking prevalence. The goal of a smoke-free community no longer seems out of reach but there is still much to be done to achieve it.

The overall projections across England show that the country is on track to reach below five per cent smoking prevalence by 2030, provided that trends continue in their current trajectory. Smoking prevalence is set to reach approximately 4.9 per cent by 2030 and reach negligible levels by 2040. It should be noted, however, that current trajectories are unlikely to continue indefinitely, projections further in the future are less reliable, and it is likely that diminishing returns will lead to a reduction in the rate of decrease before a nationwide prevalence of zero is attained.

The LGA strongly believes that vapes should only be used as an aid to quit smoking. A number of councils have effectively used vapes as a means of encouraging people to quit smoking.

• Essex County Council has worked closely with local partners to provide free access to nicotine replacement therapy and vape starter kits for residents. The Council was one of the first to work with vape retailers and has seen significant increases in the local quit rate through these partnerships. The Wellbeing Service currently works with two vape shops that have gained a strong standing in their community, particularly during COVID-19 lockdowns, and a new community-based project supports smokers who are homeless or suffering severe multiple disadvantages to switch to vaping.
• Sheffield City Council’s Tobacco Dependence Treatment Service provides smokers with stop smoking medications and offers vapes as a harm reduction measure to smokers who want either to switch or to quit tobacco with vapes. The Council has also developed a suite of resources with Action on Smoking and Health to support schools and parents in dealing with vaping among young people.

While research has shown vaping poses a small fraction of the risks of smoking, it is deeply worrying that more and more children – who have never smoked – are starting vaping.

Many local areas have noted an increase in shops selling vapes to young people, and subsequently have stepped up enforcement activity to deal with the issue. Councils are especially concerned by the marketing of vapes with designs and flavours that could appeal to children, in particular those with fruity and bubble gum flavours, and colourful child-friendly packaging. Strict new measures to regulate the display and marketing of vaping products in the same way as tobacco are needed.

To help stop children from being able to access vapes, the LGA believes that vapes should be in plain packaging and kept out-of-sight behind the counter. Research from King's College London found that 40 per cent of teenagers expressed a preference for certain vaping products while only 32 per cent had a preference when they had generic packaging. This suggests that removing or reducing the imagery and branding from vaping products may help discourage teen use, and we believe this is something the Government should carefully consider.

It is also important that legal loopholes which mean it is not illegal to hand out free e-cigarettes to children are closed. Additionally, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) should liaise with other government departments dealing with other age-restricted products and align their policies/messages to stop confusion amongst consumers and businesses. Introducing a mandatory Challenge 25 policy would be helpful for all age restricted products.

The LGA also believes that sanctions need to be reviewed and more robust measures should be introduced to tackle the significant number of retailers who persistently sell vapes to under-age children. Councils should be able to issue fixed penalty notices as prosecutions can be resource intensive, and consideration should be given to being able to issue fines on a scale in accordance with the issues identified, for example number of under-age sales, age of recipient, and the number of times the retailer broke the rules. Where required, there should be the possibility of using the higher fines and stronger sentences which are available to the courts to act as a clear deterrent to retailers who flout the rules. It is also important action is taken to tackle the online supply of vaping products. It would assist councils if there was a body that could take the appropriate enforcement action.

In a survey by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, 60 per cent of local trading standards services said high street shops selling illicit vapes or vaping products to children was the enforcement issue that most concerned them. Councils take their enforcement responsibilities extremely seriously and have worked hard to tackle the sale of vapes to children. Examples of recent action taken to tackle sales of vapes to children include:

• Councils in London launching undercover operations to prosecute shops selling e-cigarettes to children. Barking and Dagenham Council is investigating three shops after its trading standards team sent teenagers aged 13 and 14 into businesses to buy vaping products.
  
   
• A campaign in Bracknell, Wokingham and West Berkshire aims to stop young people using vapes with visits to schools to discuss the potential dangers of vaping, and shops and supermarkets to check for underage sales and illegal vaping products.
  
   
• Suffolk Trading Standards recently caught three shops in Ipswich and Felixstowe selling vaping fluid to underage customers.
  
   
• Shropshire Council has raised concerns about vaping in children increasing and is carrying out test purchase operations, which has led to the seizure of 1,044 illegal vape products and three sales of vapes to children.
  
   
• Shops in Taunton and Mansfield have also been recently closed after selling vaping products to children.
  
   
• Norfolk Trading Standards officers have reported a worrying increase in reports of shops selling e-cigarettes to children.
  
   
• Police and council officers in Southend seized over 1,200 illegal vape pens allegedly being sold to children.

It is welcome that the Government is providing £3 million in new funding to trading standards, which will help share knowledge and intelligence around the country. However, this still falls a long way short of the funding needed. Trading standards teams have seen a significant reduction to core budgets over recent years, and continue to face acute staff shortages, whilst also seeing the number of enforcement responsibilities increase through new legislation on a range of different Government priorities. Similarly, council public health teams have seen a £770 million real terms reduction in funding between 2015/16 and 2022/23 – a fall of £17.06 (22.3 per cent) per person. This has had an adverse effect on councils’ ability to invest in services and functions that prevent ill health, reduce health inequalities and support a sustainable health and social care system.

To help trading standards teams in the long term, the LGA continues to call on the Government to boost the future pipeline of qualified trading standards officers through a dedicated apprenticeship fund, investing in regional support networks, and enabling councils to recover more of the costs of running regulatory services. It is also essential that councils receive multi-year public health grant settlements and more long-term certainty around public health funding for all councils. These steps will support the Government’s wider ambitions around smoking cessation and tobacco control.

An area that is also of growing concern in relation to vaping is the effect on the environment, particularly “disposable” vapes. In the UK, 1.3 million single-use vapes thrown away every week, amounting to 167.5 million per year.

Single use vapes are designed as one unit so batteries cannot be separated from the plastic, making them almost impossible to recycle. Councils report they are experiencing pollution from vapes in the form of plastic materials, electronic waste and hazardous chemicals. In particular, the lithium batteries inside the plastic can sharply increase in temperature if crushed and can become flammable. This all comes at a cost to the council taxpayer through fire damage to equipment and the specialist treatment needed to deal with hazardous waste.

The LGA believes that the ‘polluter pays’ principle should apply, and that e-cigarette manufacturers and vendors should be required to do more to ensure consumers dispose of their waste in a more environmentally friendly way, and any action on this issue by Government would be very welcome.

A ‘polluter pays’ levy would also provide, at no cost to the public purse, the funding needed to eradicate the social and geographical inequalities in smoking and deliver a Smokefree 2030. According to the APPG for Smoking, such a levy could raise around £700 million a year from tobacco manufacturers to pay for stop smoking services, mass media campaigns like Stoptober and work to stop the sale of illegal tobacco

At the time of writing, we are aware of calls from councils in England and Scotland calling for a complete country-wide ban on the sale of disposable vapes, for the sake of the environment and our young people. The LGA has not yet come to a conclusion whether it supports a ban on the sale of disposable vapes.

Arian Nemati, Public Affairs and Campaigns Adviser

Email: [email protected]