CONTENTS:

Tobacco News

Smoking prevalence in Britain falls by 2%
Launch of UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies
Global Youth Tobacco Survey

Parliamentary News

EDM: 753: Smoking rates
PQ: Proxy purchase of tobacco

Industry Watch

Imperial Tobacco plans to buy Spanish cigarette distribution company

Recent Research

Effectiveness of nurse-delivered smoking cessation interventions
Smoking cessation rates in the United States: A comparison of young adult and older smokers
Parents' perceptions of young children's tolerance of tobacco smoke

Events and Publications

See List of Events at the end of this bulletin

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Tobacco News

Smoking prevalence in Britain falls by 2%

The latest Government data show that the proportion of adults who smoke in Britain has fallen by 2% overall between 2005 and 2006, from 24% to 22%. Among routine and manual groups smoking prevalence also fell by 2% from 31% in 2005 to 29% in 2006. This suggests that the Government targets of 21% prevalence by 2010 and the more challenging 26% among manual groups may be achieved.

The downturn follows a period of little change since the second half of the 1990s when prevalence levelled out at about 27% before resuming a slow decline in the early 2000s.

The reports reveals that just over two thirds (68 per cent) of cigarette smokers in Britain say they want to stop smoking but 59% said it would be difficult to go without smoking for a whole day.

In 2006, 16 per cent of smokers had their first cigarette within five minutes of waking up. Men were more likely than women to say they had their first cigarette within five minutes of waking – 18% of men compared to 15% of women.

National Statistics news release 22 Jan. 2008

The full GHS report: Smoking and drinking among adults, 2006 is available at:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_compendia/GHS06/Smokinganddrinkingamongadults2006.pdf  

Launch of UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies

A new £20 million investment has established five Centres of Excellence across the UK to strengthen research into complex public health issues such as obesity, smoking and health inequalities. One of these, the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies (UKCTCS) brings together seven leading UK research groups in a unique partnership, establishing one of the world’s largest research groups dedicated to the prevention of harm from smoking.

Led by Professor John Britton in Nottingham, the Centre will be a major international driver of new research, policy and practice to reduce the prevalence of smoking and the harm it causes. The Centre will achieve this through a programme of research, training and capacity building and engagement with a wide range of partner organisations, the research community and the public. Research work will investigate the effects of exposure before birth, smoking uptake and addiction in adolescence, methods of stopping smoking, and approaches to reduce the harm caused by addiction to tobacco. The team will work with leading policy-makers and health professionals at national, European and international levels to increase awareness of the importance of tobacco control to reduce smoking–related death and disease, and advocate effective tobacco control policy implementation.

Source: Media release 23 Jan 2008. For further information contact: Clew Communications: 020 7580 7550.

Global Youth Tobacco Survey

The findings from the latest Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) suggest that the estimate of a doubling of deaths from smoking (from 5 million per year to approximately 10 million per year by 2020) might be an underestimate because of the increase in smoking among young girls compared with adult females, the high susceptibility of smoking among never smokers, high levels of exposure to secondhand smoke, and pro-tobacco indirect advertising.

The survey includes data collected during 2000-2007 from 140 WHO member states and territories. The GYTS is a school-based survey using a standardised methodology of students aged 13-15 years.

Key findings:
• Overall 9.5 per cent of students currently smoked cigarettes
• Smoking prevalence was highest in Europe (19.2%) and lowest in eastern Mediterranean region
• Among those who had never smoked, 19.1% indicated that they were susceptible to initiate smoking during the next year.
• Overall, approximately 4 in 10 students were exposed to smoke in their home
• Exposure to smoke in the home was highest in Europe (77.8%)
• Overall, 14.9% of students owned an object with a cigarette brand logo on it.
• Overall, 68.7% of students who currently smoked said they would like to stop smoking
• Five in 10 students who currently smoked usually purchased their cigarettes in stores. The rate was highest in Europe (61.7%)

The authors of this report conclude that interventions that decrease tobacco use among youth (e.g., increasing excise taxes, media campaigns, school programs in conjunction with community interventions, and community interventions that decrease minors' access to tobacco) must be broad-based, focused on boys and girls, and have components directed toward prevention and cessation. If effective programs are not developed and implemented soon, future morbidity and mortality attributed to tobacco probably will increase. WHO FCTC, WHO regional tobacco-control action plans, and country tobacco-control action plans provide useful frameworks for implementing such a comprehensive approach. The synergy between countries passing tobacco control laws, regulations or decrees; ratifying and complying WHO FCTC; and conducting GYTS offers a unique opportunity to develop, implement and evaluate comprehensive tobacco control policy that can be helpful to each country.

Warren CW et al. Global Youth Tobacco Surveillance 2000-2007. MMWR Surveillance Summaries. January 25, 2008 /57(SS01); 1-21
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5701a1.htm?s_cid=ss5701a1_e  

Parliamentary News

EDM 753: Smoking rates

David Taylor MP has put down the following Motion:

That this House welcomes the two per cent. reduction achieved in 2006 in the smoking prevalence rate among adults in the UK, bringing the rate down to 22 per cent. and the reduction from 33 per cent to 28 per cent. in the equivalent rate amongst routine and manual workers recorded by the General Household Survey between 1998 and 2006; anticipates a further substantial reduction for 2007 as a result of smoke-free legislation; and urges the Government to build on these successes with an adequately resourced, comprehensive and cross-governmental strategy for tobacco control.

www.parliament.uk 22 Jan. 2007
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=34915&SESSION=891  

PQ: Proxy purchase of tobacco

Baroness Coussins (crossbench): Whether [the Government] will make it an offence for adults to buy cigarettes on behalf of children under 18 years of age, in the same way as it is already a proxy purchase offence to buy alcoholic drinks to pass on to children.

Lord Darzi of Denham (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Health): We are not considering an offence of proxy purchasing of tobacco. In practice, it would be extremely difficult to enforce and therefore be of limited value in the Government's efforts to reduce smoking among young people under the age of 18.

HoC Hansard Column 182WA 07 Jan 2008
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldhansrd/text/80107w0008.htm#column_WA182

Industry Watch

Imperial Tobacco plans to buy Spanish cigarette distribution company

Imperial Tobacco Group Plc plans to pay 910 million euros ($1.3 billion) for the shares it doesn't yet own in Compania de Distribucion Integral Logista SA, Spain's largest cigarette distributor, after a takeover gave it a majority stake.

Imperial, Europe's second-biggest publicly traded cigarette maker, inherited its 59.6 percent stake in Logista after gaining control of Altadis SA in a 12.6 billion-euro bid. Chief Executive Officer Gareth Davis said it is buying Madrid-based Logista because it would be too hard to find a private-equity bidder during a three-month deadline imposed by regulators.

Spanish market rules had obliged Imperial to either offer to buy the rest of the distributor or cut its stake to less than 30 percent during a three-month period starting from 25 January.

Gareth Davis also said Imperial may offer to buy Turkish cigarette maker Tekel, which the country's government is attempting to sell for a third time.

Imperial, which controls almost half of the U.K. cigarette market with brands including Lambert & Butler, is eager to expand in Turkey, Davis said. More than three-fifths of adult Turkish males smoke, compared with fewer than a third in the U.K., the World Health Organization's Tobacco Atlas shows.

Bloomberg, January 25, 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=a5mwJ_Xc6i6Q&refer=europe  

Recent Research

Effectiveness of nurse-delivered smoking cessation interventions

Healthcare professionals, including nurses, frequently advise patients to improve their health by stopping smoking. Such advice may be brief, or part of more intensive interventions. A Cochrane review of interventions was conducted to determine the effectiveness of nursing-delivered smoking cessation interventions.

Selection criteria: Randomized trials of smoking cessation interventions delivered by nurses or health visitors with follow up of at least six months.

The main outcome measure was abstinence from smoking after at least six months of follow up.

Main results
Forty-two studies met the inclusion criteria. Thirty-one studies comparing a nursing intervention to a control or to usual care found the intervention to significantly increase the likelihood of quitting (RR 1.28, 95% CI 1.18 to 1.38). There was heterogeneity among the study results, but pooling using a random effects model did not alter the estimate of a statistically significant effect. In a subgroup analysis there was weaker evidence that lower intensity interventions were effective (RR 1.27, 95% CI 0.99 to 1.62). There was limited indirect evidence that interventions were more effective for hospital inpatients with cardiovascular disease than for inpatients with other conditions. Interventions in non-hospitalized patients also showed evidence of benefit. Nine studies comparing different nurse-delivered interventions failed to detect significant benefit from using additional components. Five studies of nurse counselling on smoking cessation during a screening health check, or as part of multifactorial secondary prevention in general practice (not included in the main meta-analysis) found nursing intervention to have less effect under these conditions.

Authors' conclusions:
The results indicate the potential benefits of smoking cessation advice and/or counselling given by nurses to patients, with reasonable evidence that intervention is effective. The evidence of an effect is weaker when interventions are brief and are provided by nurses whose main role is not health promotion or smoking cessation. The challenge will be to incorporate smoking behaviour monitoring and smoking cessation interventions as part of standard practice, so that all patients are given an opportunity to be asked about their tobacco use and to be given advice and/or counselling to quit along with reinforcement and follow up.

VH Rice, LF Stead. Nursing interventions for smoking cessation.
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2008 Issue 1 (Status: Updated)
DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD001188.pub3 This version first published online: 23 January 2008 in Issue 1, 2008
Date of Most Recent Substantive Amendment: 21 October 2007
http://www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD001188/frame.html

Smoking cessation rates in the United States: A comparison of young adult and older smokers

Objectives. We compared smoking quit rates by age in a nationally representative sample to determine differences in cessation rates among younger and older adults.

Methods. We used data on recent dependent smokers aged 18 to 64 years from the 2003 Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey (n=31625).

Results. Young adults (aged 18–24 years) were more likely than were older adults (aged 35–64 years) to report having seriously tried to quit (84% vs 66%, P<.01) and to have quit for 6 months or longer (8.5% vs 5.0%, P <.01).

Among those who seriously tried to quit, a smoke-free home was associated with quitting for 6 months or longer (odds ratio [OR]=4.13; 95% confidence interval [CI]=3.25, 5.26). Compared with older smokers, young adults were more likely to have smoke-free homes (43% vs 30%, P <.01), were less likely to use pharmaceutical aids (9.8% vs 23.7%, P <.01), and smoked fewer cigarettes per day (13.2% vs 17.4%, P <.01).

Conclusions. Young adults were more likely than were older adults to quit smoking successfully. This could be explained partly by young adults’ more widespread interest in quitting, higher prevalence of smoke-free homes, and lower levels of dependence. High cessation rates among young adults may also reflect changing social norms.

Messer, K. et al. Smoking cessation rates in the United States: A comparison of young adult and older smokers. American Journal of Public Health, 10.2105/AJPH.2007.112060

http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/AJPH.2007.112060v1

Parents' perceptions of young children's tolerance of tobacco smoke

Abstract

Despite knowing the risks to their children's health, parents continue to expose their children to tobacco smoke prior to and after their birth. This study explores the factors influencing parent's behaviour in preventing the exposure of their (unborn) children to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and any changes to their smoking behaviour in the home during the first years of their children's lives. Whether or not they stopped smoking during pregnancy, the women did not protect themselves from breathing in other people's smoke. Yet once the baby was born, parents actively protected the baby from environmental tobacco, believing that the lungs of newborn babies were too immature to tolerate smoke. This protection lasted only for a matter of weeks for some babies, or stopped when they were 6-12 months old, linked to their parent's belief that older babies could tolerate or avoid smoke. These findings suggest that changes made to smoking during the first weeks of a baby's life are unlikely to be sustained, and key messages about the risks if ETS exposure need to be delivered repeatedly over the first 2 years of life and re-enforced as the child gets older.

Robinson J, Kirkcaldy AJ. 'Imagine all that smoke in their lungs': parents' perceptions of young children's tolerance of tobacco smoke. Health Educ Res. 2007 Dec 20

http://her.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/cym080v1

Events and Publications

Events

20 February 2008 - D-MYST International Smokefree Movies Event
Venue: Liverpool
For more information contact: Samantha Towers on 0844 800 8533
Email: Samantha@mcevents.tv

27 Feb. to 1 Mar. 2008 -14th Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco Annual Meeting
Venue: Portland, United States
Contact: SRNT Secretariat: info@srnt.org

10th - 12th March 2008 SCTRP three-day course, Central London
This Course is the development of the traditional 'Maudsley Training'. It focuses on treatment methods validated by research. It also covers aspects of the smoking cessation field useful for policy-makers and public health practitioners.
Contact Janice Rossabi, SCTRP Course Secretary at sctrp@yahoo.co.uk

1-2 April 2008 – 16th UKPHA Annual Public Health Forum
Venue: Liverpool.. See: www.ukphaconference.org.uk for more details.

28-29 April 2008 - A Call To Action: Successful Tobacco Control for the Future
Conference organised by ASH Wales. http://www.smoking-conference-wales.org.uk/  

30 June – 1 July 2008 – UK National Smoking Cessation Conference (UKNSCC)
Venue: Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel
The world’s largest gathering of smoking cessation practitioners, researchers and policy makers.
Abstract deadline: 14 April 2008. See www.uknscc.org for more information.

4-8 October 2008 – European Respiratory Society Annual Congress
Details: info@ersnet.org