Puff at your PC: Office vaping gets ministers’ backing

VAPING should be allowed in offices and enclosed public spaces in order to “maximise” access to safer alternatives to smoking, a government plan says.

Announcing a vision to create a “smoke-free generation”, ministers set targets to cut smoking rates by one quarter in adults and to stamp out the habit among younger generations.

The Tobacco Control Plan pledges to “maximise the availability of safer alternatives to smoking” and to support smokers turning to nicotine substitutes. In particular, it reminds employers that e-cigarette use is not covered by smokefree legislation, so should not be included in policies that ban smoking.

“The evidence is increasingly clear that e-cigarettes are significantly less harmful to health than smoking tobacco,” the plan notes. “The Government will seek to support consumers in stopping smoking and adopting the use of less harmful nicotine products.” Six years ago, more than 20 per cent of adults smoked, which is now down to 15.5 per cent – the lowest level since records began. The new target is to cut this to 12 per cent or under by 2022, and to cut smoking among 15-year-olds from 8 per cent to 3 per cent or less. Ministers also want to almost halve smoking in pregnancy by 2022, from 10.7 per cent at present to 6 per cent or under.

The Government said it wanted to set a “bold ambition for a smoke-free generation” as it unveiled its plan for England. Being “smoke free” is defined as smoking rates of 5 per cent or less.

The plan also pledges to use the UK’S exit from the EU to “identify where we can sensibly deregulate without harming public health”. This would include looking again at the Tobacco Products Directive, with regard to e-cigarettes.

The directive introduced last year met with some criticism, amid concerns that regulations limiting the size and strength of e-cigarettes could push some consumers back to smoking.

Health officials said it was down to individual organisations to choose their own policies, but highlighted Public Health England guidance which stresses that laws banning smoking in the workplace and enclosed public spaces do not cover e-cigarettes.

There are currently 7.3million adult smokers in England, and more than 200 people a day die from a smokingrelated illness. The difference in life expectancy between the poorest and the richest can be as much as nine years – with smoking accounting for about half of this difference.

Public health minister Steve Brine said: “Smoking continues to kill hundreds of people a day in England, and we know the harms fall hardest on some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society.”

Prof Parveen Kumar, from the British Medical Association, said services to help people give up smoking were seeing funding cuts, which must be reversed.