In the second episode of our UK Tobacco and Vape Bill special, Martin Cullip highlights the potential consequences of this latest legislation, and asks, is the UK at risk of damaging its world-leading tobacco harm reduction record?
Chapters:
0:00 - Consequences of the UK Tobacco and Vape Bill 1:48 - "This sends a signal that vaping is a bad idea!"Transcription:
00:23
Joanna Junak: So what do you think are the main concerns about the implementation of the bill?
00:28
Martin Cullip: Well, the real problems are in the vaping restrictions, you know, banning flavours, plain packaging. They're talking about hiding these products from display banning, vending machines, which is a curious one, seeing as they're mostly only used in NHS hospitals and the like. But yeah, overall, it's just a complete attack on vaping products, which is disappointing because we had a world leading approach to harm reduction and which has been which has led to massive declines in smoking rates. And now they seem to be throwing the baby out of the bathwater and they seem to have forgotten. a lot of these MPs, and a lot of them are new MPs, which is very worrying, they seem to have forgotten that there are something like nine or ten times more adults using vaping products than youth. So for every youth they deter from taking up a benign habit, they're also going to turn nine or ten adult smokers away or adults who vape who maybe previously have smoked because the vast majority were former smokers. So these are going to be overly negative things. And it's just this moral panic about youth vaping has taken over and no one's really thinking of the consequences, sadly.
01:49
Joanna Junak: And do you see any benefits in the introduction of this bill?
01:54
Martin Cullip: I don't think so. I mean, the general relational age ban Like I said, it comes in November, 2027. I mean, children are not really smoking anymore. The smoking rates are the lowest they've ever been. And the worry is all about the vaping. Well, one has led to the other. How many of these kids would be using nicotine by smoking instead of vaping if vapes weren't around? So they're not really thinking of those sort of trade-offs and real life consequences of vapes being around. And quite apart from anything else, this whole palaver about vaping has been turning the public against them. And now we already have a majority in the country who believe, I think it's 58%, that vaping is more harmful than smoking. So this legislation, these new rules are just going to reinforce that and just send a signal to a public that's already very badly informed on these products that vaping is a bad idea. And you'll have smokers who obviously don't need much excuse to carry on smoking for many cases. They're just going to be saying, well, I might as well just stick with the smokes because I know where I am with them. I can't see any public health benefits at all. And it's unfortunate that MPs aren't looking into this in more detail and coming to different conclusions.
03:20
Joanna Junak: Thank you, Martin. That's all for today. Tune in next time here on GFN TV or on our podcast. You can also find transcriptions of each episode on the GFN TV website. Thanks for watching or listening. See you next time.