Mark Eastwood is the MP for Dewsbury and is Vice Chair of the APPG for Responsible Vaping.
Ahead of today’s Second Reading of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which will create sweeping Henry VIII style powers to restrict vape flavours, point of display and packaging of vaping and other nicotine products, it is vital the Government takes a comprehensive evidence-based approach to future vaping regulation.
We must learn the lessons of vaping legislation in New Zealand and Australia and ensure that vaping policy, law and regulation in the UK is developed in a way which ultimately achieves the shared objective to reduce youth vaping, whilst not weakening the benefits of vaping in helping adults quit.
For example, the potential adoption of stricter options on flavours (potentially to just four flavours), risks undermining the Government’s smokefree ambitions and ignores the evidence.
The Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC) assessment of the Government’s plans also highlights that restricting flavours may make vaping less attractive for existing smokers and may make specific groups more vulnerable to a relapse to smoking. The RPC also noted that the Government’s rationale for intervention for the range of vaping policies was weak and needed to be strengthened.
A balance must be struck, in communicating the success of vaping as a cessation tool which has allowed millions of UK adults to stop smoking, whilst understanding and addressing concerns around youth access, illicit vapes and the environmental impact.
A look at the evidence and the opportunity cost of adults who vape instead of smoke, shows that vaping not only has the potential to save smokers’ lives, but could also save the NHS more than £500 million a year if half of England’s adults smokers vaped instead.
The powers that the Government is seeking to give itself potentially risk damaging the gains that have already been achieved and future benefits. The Bill as currently written gives the Government carte blanche to introduce restrictions without the need for further consultation or to consider their impact on, for instance, groups such as smokers or ex-smokers, who could be adversely affected.
That’s why members of the APPG for Responsible Vaping will be seeking to amend the Bill as it moves through Parliament and to place a duty on the Secretary of State for Health to undertake statutory consultation before implementing any further changes and to produce further assessments of their impacts.
We look forward to working with Government to ensure that future policies on vaping do not risk the positive role that vaping has had and must continue to have in helping adult smokers quit.
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Author: Mark Eastwood MP
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