Smoking tobacco kills! There’s no disputing the facts, if it doesn’t get you sooner it will catch up with you later. And while millions of former smokers have finally conquered their desperate craving for the weed, mostly wishing they’d given up years earlier, there are still around seven million adult smokers in the UK. Others have switched to e-cigarettes or other vaping devices, and despite all the health warnings, many more begin their risky relationship with nicotine every single day. Vaping is generally considered the more acceptable and less dangerous form of smoking, and while scientists at Kings College London have concluded that in the short and medium term, it is far less harmful than smoking cigarettes, they also said that it is “not risk-free.” They urge those who have never smoked or vaped to resist both options and say that care is needed in forming public health messages regarding vaping to avoid unintended effects such as “less harmful” being misinterpreted as “safe.” The scientists agree that while those smoking cigarettes should, if possible, switch to vaping, more studies of its long-term effects are needed. Smokers who do switch from cigarettes to vaping can get NHS support. Major concerns for young people taking up vaping. Experts stress that these alternative products contain nicotine, which in itself is highly addictive, and that vaping might lead to serious health issues and make it easier to transition to regular cigarettes.

Meanwhile, there are suggestions emerging from Whitehall that current (at time of going to press) health secretary Thérèse Coffey does not intend to honour a previous government commitment to publish a tobacco control plan “later this year.” Coffey is herself a smoker and has in the past accepted hospitality from the tobacco industry. She has in the past voted in the Commons against a number of measures to restrict smoking, including the ban on smoking in enclosed spaces, the outlawing of smoking in cars containing children and forcing cigarettes to be sold in plain packs. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss is another long-standing sceptic of tobacco control and has also opposed legislation to clamp down on smoking. Another former health secretary, Sajid Javid, committed the government to a tobacco action plan before the end of 2022. In April, Maggie Throup, then public health minister, reiterated the commitment and timeline. The plan was part of the government’s ambition to cut smoking-related deaths by making Britain “smoke-free” by 2030. Now rumours are circulating that Coffey no longer intends to publish the plan of action, and despite the Department of Health and Social Care saying it is “inaccurate” to suggest the control plan is being dropped, it has not said if or when it will be published. Maybe under the new administration there will be a change of heart, but for now it appears that smokers and vapers can carry on puffing into next year and for who knows how long into the future.