Heated Tobacco
Debate between Charles Walker and Seema Kennedy(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Seema Kennedy)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) for raising the important issue of heated tobacco products and their contribution to reducing harm from smoking, and for his lifelong service as a fellow of Cancer Research UK. He put it very well: smoking is still prevalent in certain communities in our country, and still causes over 78,000 deaths a year in England. It is one of the leading causes of preventable illness and premature death. We have made great progress, particularly over the past 10 years. Adult smoking prevalence is now 14.9%—the lowest ever recorded level—but, as he pointed out, we have much further to go, particularly among certain groups and in certain parts of the country.
In the 2017 tobacco control plan, we set out our ambition to reduce smoking and ensure a smoke-free generation. Part of that strategy is about helping people to stop smoking by adopting the use of less harmful nicotine products. They may, for example, take up chewing gum. I have never seen my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) spit out his gum on the pavement.
Mr Charles Walker
I quit 15 years ago, but it took me 12 years because the only choice besides smoking was nicotine gum, and it was simply revolting. I would have quit a lot earlier if we had some of these modern products around 15 years ago.
Seema Kennedy
I hear what my hon. Friend is saying. For a lot of people, nicotine substitutes are a good transition to giving up smoking or other things completely. We have seen a dramatic rise in the use of e-cigarettes from 1.6 million users in 2014 to about 2.5 million in 2017. Encouragingly, about half of them in England have quit smoking completely. E-cigarettes are not risk-free, however. The evidence is increasingly clear that they are significantly less harmful to health than smoking tobacco. They can help smokers to quit, particularly when combined with stop smoking services. Recent studies have shown they can be twice as effective as nicotine replacement therapy in helping people quit smoking. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West pointed out, the sales of e-cigarettes are plateauing, and we are coming to the stubborn 5% of people who are still smoking.