Will kids go to doc for nicotine patches - no (Copy)

Addiction Economy Thought for Today - infuriating evidence, yet again, of the serious problem with having ASH and Public Health England Tobacco Control Unit as the lead public bodies on vapes. Is it wilful blindness? All they can see is harm from smoking and constantly downplay and fail to learn the lessons from smoking for vaping.

Here are three key points from a new Welsh report on vaping and this article from the Telegraph.

Large numbers of children are now addicted to vapes and "should be given gum or patches to help them break their addiction" say Welsh public health officials. (BTW, these are among the least successful smoking cessation tools, and do not address the issues which led to vaping in the first place, but this medicalised approach is all there is.)

Joe Woof and I have been pushing for the need for vaping help for addicted children and young people for a year. We were told by Deborah Arnott from ASH that 'you are focusing on the wrong problem', and Martin Dockrell that vaping was just a phase for young people, merely a dependency that they would get over. Guess what, not true. It is Nicotine, the reason why so many smokers carry on even when they know there is a 50/50 chance they will die of it.

Here again Hazel Cheeseman from ASH ““Addiction is not desirable at any age and certainly not in childhood. However, it must be remembered that the much bigger risk to health remains smoking". Not if you are a young vaper it's not.

As we have been saying, the statistics on vapes and safety are outdated, they compare whether vapes have the chemicals which damage the lungs from smoking, not whether the hundreds of chemicals in the products, approved for ingestion not inhalation, have the potential for damage in their own right.

The small number of hospital admissions for vaping vs smoking is not really comparable. Here 50 vapers vs 28,000 smokers admitted. However, these are smokers over 25 who have been smoking for years, the vapers for much less time. I would be interested to see the cases for those who have just taken up smoking and vaping at the same time.

We must do much better at doing both - helping smokers quit and preventing vapes being another mainstream nicotine addiction as is the openly stated plan from the companies of all types.

All 4 of the components of the Economic Model are happening here - addictive product design, predatory marketing, misinformation and undermining public policy - these must be addressed as a matter of urgency.

But most importantly recommending young people see a doctor to get a nicotine patch really won't work. We need more imaginative and effective routes to help them quit and not start in the first place.