Whitty Worrying About Children

Professor Sir Christopher Whitty says the evidence on the dangers posed by second-hand smoking is “overwhelming”. Despite this, he adds, he believes the tobacco industry is going to great pains to undermine the evidence. 

“The risk of getting or accelerating diseases such as cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are significantly increased by second-hand (passive) smoke, including in non-smokers who now make up over 88% of the UK adult population,” says Whitty.

“Some people are especially vulnerable to tobacco chemicals: children, pregnant women, people with common pre-existing but usually invisible health conditions like asthma, diabetes or coronary heart disease. There are now more people with serious medical conditions that can be made worse by second-hand smoke than there are smokers and they do not choose to be exposed to risk from smoke in a public place.”

Professor Sir Christopher Whitty believes that tobacco companies addict people at a young age which means that “millions of people who smoke will suffer substantial health harms throughout their life.”

He lists those harms as including: 

• higher rates of dementia, 
• stroke, 
• heart attacks 
• lung disease 
• cancers
• smokers are more likely to need NHS services, 
• smokers are more likely to be admitted to hospital, 
• smokers are more likely to drop out of work,
• smokers are more likely to need social care.

He argues that measures to roll out a generational age ban on purchasing tobacco products, as included in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, is justified because “most smokers wish they had never started, want to quit and should be supported to do so but are find they are trapped, their choice taken away by the addiction deliberately induced in them by the industry at an early age”.

He says this also justifies the extending of smoking bans in outdoor spaces as “many non-smokers are harmed simply by being near smoking.”

“Substantial” harms.

Whitty says the indoor smoking ban reduced heart attack hospital admissions by 1200 and led to fewer child asthma hospital admissions.

“Three things particularly predict harm: the concentration of smoke; the amount of time being exposed; the vulnerability of the individuals. Although outdoor spaces generally have lower concentrations of the toxic chemicals from tobacco than indoors studies show they can still be significant near or downwind of smoking or in areas like a walled or covered outdoor space. If you can smell smoke, you are inhaling it in appreciable amounts,” he says.

Then Whitty moves on to attacking vaping.

“The Bill will also address the tricks used to make vapes attractive to children. The message on vapes is clear; if you smoke swap to vapes; if you don’t smoke don’t vape; it is utterly unacceptable to market vapes to children. Because smoking is so dangerous, smokers moving to vapes is safer, but best of all is not to smoke or vape.

“Anywhere someone can smoke, they should therefore be able to vape as a quit aid but the long-term effects of vaping, including passive vaping, are unknown. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will ban the advertising and sponsorship of vapes and also allow the government, after consultation, to protect children from marketing techniques vaping companies use to addict them including through bright colours, flavours and cartoons.”

The trouble is Whitty is not being honest. Research shows us that when vaping is attacked, flavours restricted and products banned, the result is to both drive down vaping – and drive up teen smoking.

The ‘marketing at children’ argument is a trope that relies on a handful of illegal products. This doesn’t describe the legitimate industry that has grown to supply to adult smokers. By continuing to treat vaping like smoking is to equate the pair in the eyes of smokers.

When we see increasing smoking rates among adults and teens, will Professor Sir Chris Whitty apologise?

Dave Cross

Journalist at POTV

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Dave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.