Professor Sir Chris Whitty's commitment to banning smoking and vaping
On Wednesday Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a huge crackdown on smoking. He pledged to raise the legal age for smoking, by one year every year, to hopefully create a smoke-free generation. But with more young people than ever turning to vapes, not cigarettes - is the Prime Minister doing enough to tackle the vaping epidemic?
England’s Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty shares his thoughts on the crackdown, and his plans to help eliminate vaping.
Discussing if this could become a reality, Chris explained: “I do and what was really striking is, when we raised the age of sale here in the UK from 16 to 18, that led to a real drop in smoking and what we’re hope is, as it steadily moves up the ages, we’ll end up in a situation where no one is smoking.
“The reason that’s so important is the range of problems this causes, range from when people are pregnant, still births for example, all the way through to cancers and heart diseases, right up to the end, stroke and dementia. Smoking is so bad and actually doing anything we can to the point we have none is just amazing.”
Responding to what the government is doing to tackle the increase in people vaping, he said: “The reason really that we have vapes at all is because smoking is so dangerous… that allowing people to be able move on to vapes, improves their health. So if you smoke, moving to vaping is an improvement but being safer than cigarettes is an incredibly low bar, they’re so dangerous.”
On the increase in young people taking up vaping, he told Alison and Josie: “We absolutely do not want our children vaping at all, because the big danger is that they get addicted, all the long term effects that they get of vaping and so it is utterly unacceptable that people are marking to young people, yet you see the bright colours, you see the flavours, you see the way they’re displayed. They’re clearly aiming at children, people may claim not but it’s obvious they are, you don’t really need to be convinced of that, it’s obvious.”
On what the Prime Minister and the government's next steps are, Chris revealed: “The first step and the Prime Minister made this very clear, what are the things that people are trying to do to make it attractive to children? Colours, flavours, cartoon characters…
“Over the next few weeks, there will be a consultation launched very shortly to ask ‘Right, how do we get the right balance between making vapes available for smokers to move on to?’ because it’s safer for smokers to move on to but absolutely not to be attractive to children, because it’s completely unacceptable to be doing that.”
Alison then announced: “We are actually going to be doing a campaign with This Morning to stop our children, the younger generation from vaping and we would love for you to back it as well because it’s so important, this is our future, our kids and for anybody out there, parents that have got children that have started vaping, what advice would you give to those parents?”Chris replied: “First of all, I will one hundred percent back you. It is utterly unacceptable that we are marketing vapes to children and anything to discourage that…
“And then in terms of encouraging children, of course children always experiment, and I think what children need to understand is the risk to this and they need to understand the dangers that they actually get trapped, and this is the thing about addiction is that people get trapped in something. They start off thinking, we’ll just try it a bit and then they find themselves trapped in an addiction they really didn’t want.”
During the interview, Chris told Alison and Josie: “I’m not a natural on TV and I don’t particularly enjoy media but it’s very much part of the job and I see it as my job. It’s a real pleasure to meet you, I have to say!”
Before later adding: “If I’m at one end of enjoying publicity, Mr Hancock is at the other!”