The UKVIA has written has to the Secretary of State calling on the Department of Health and Social Care to back vaping and smoking public education with much-needed funding following alarming new Freedom of Information data. The letter reads:
Dear Wes,
On behalf of the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA), we wanted to bring to your attention the lack of public education campaigns on smoking cessation and vaping, which could play a key role in helping the UK’s remaining six million smokers quit and get the UK’s smokefree ambitions back on track.
Freedom of Information data, provided by the Department of Health and Social Care, has revealed that under the previous government, only £4.88 million was spent on stop smoking campaigns over the past two financial years – amounting to an annual average spend of less than 50p per smoker. This falls significantly short of recommendations included in the Khan Review, which called for £15 million per year in funding for a national mass media campaign which directs smokers to support and dismantles myths about vaping. The Khan Review also warned of worsening public misperceptions about vaping, yet no specific campaigns have been run to address this and data from ASH UK shows half of all smokers now wrongly believe vaping to be as or more harmful than smoking, undermining its effectiveness as a quitting tool.
Preventing young people and non-smokers from taking up vaping is critical, but the government must also support current smokers to quit. As noted in your recent comments in Parliament, smoking addiction causes harms on people’s quality of life, family-life and memories. A public education campaign can help ensure that these people are enabled to quit, with data from University College London suggesting that for every £1 million spent on advertising 2,500 smokers will quit permanently. This has been reinforced by the Royal College of Physicians who have previously said investment in mass media campaigns would ‘provide a low-cost, highly effective method to incentivise smokers to quit’. If the government truly believes in the public health potential of vaping, it must prioritise well-funded public education and allow the industry to communicate the facts about vaping as the most effective quitting tool available.
The government has an opportunity to not only ‘stop the start’, but also to help smokers to quit. We would welcome the opportunity to work with you and your officials to deliver this.
Kind regards,
John Dunne
Director General
UK Vaping Industry Association
Click here for more on the FOI data, and for an infographic breaking down key findings and information: New FOI data reveals shocking lack of investment in stop smoking campaigns under Tory rule – UKVIA