Foreseeable Harms: The Urgent Need for Stricter Regulation on Weight Loss Drugs and Vaping Products
Addiction Economy Thought for Today - foreseeable harms.
Good leader in The Times bemoaning the predictability of people getting access to the new weight loss drugs with dangerous side effects. They get prescriptions from 'online doctor services' even from Boots and Superdrug with minimal supervision.
It also cites the same failure to clamp down on the marketing of vapes to children. It is totally obvious that companies were not marketing vapes to smokers with their bright colours and sweet flavours with catch names but there was no immediate crack down. In fact the Tory plan was to put restrictions into place by 2026. Labour must do better.
"Two dismal certainties emerge from these widespread failures of scrutiny. The first is that the health of young people will inevitably be harmed. The second is that the NHS will be required to repair the damage, where that is possible, or to manage the resultant conditions. With NHS productivity flagging, and the public purse under ever greater strain, protecting the young from likely injury has an economic as well as a moral aspect. The UK simply cannot afford to allow companies or individuals to enrich themselves at the expense of public health, in the knowledge that the taxpayer will carry on meekly picking up the bill."
This is what we have been saying with our project Action on Recreational Vaping - here for interest are our recommendations to government '
"Vapes should be to cigarettes as methadone is to heroin - an important treatment for a harmful addiction, in this case preventing millions of deaths from smoking - but not a product to be taken in its own right. They have a place in helping smokers quit, but because of their own addictive qualities and negative mental and physical health impacts, should be strenuously prevented as a lifestyle product for recreational use.
"A new nicotine economy is being deliberately created under the guise of helping smokers quit, with the aim that nicotine vapes and pouches become just another ‘acceptable’ societal addiction like alcohol and gambling - as cigarettes still, sadly, remain. It must be stopped in its tracks".
Here is our White Paper on Vapes.
https://lnkd.in/gGTZvFif
Here is The Times leader
https://lnkd.in/gd9-T9Ay