Drivers could be fined £10,000 if they allow smoking with a child present in the car

Drivers and passengers of cars in England both face being slapped with huge fines if they are caught smoking with children present.

In February of this year MPs voted in a majority for an amendment to the Children and Families Bill, for a ban on smoking in cars carrying children.

However, new regulations could result in drivers of the vehicle actually incurring a fine of over 10 times that of the maximum £800 charge for the person who is smoking (i.e. the passenger).

There are health campaigners who stress such a strict move will save thousands of lives, with children not being forced to inhale the dangerous, toxic chemicals contained in each cigarette.
Opposition to the proposed penalties argue it is ‘excessive and unnecessary’ and merely an example of the government ‘flexing its muscles’.

The idea for the smoking ban in cars was passed by a clear majority of MPs in February, resulting in ministers having to devise clear legislation on the matter.

The cabinet reshuffle on Tuesday led to a consultation leaking out with details of the regulations. In the small print contained information about what offenders can expect to be hit with, stating: ‘A person who does not comply with the law would be committing a criminal offence.’

For anyone caught either lighting up in a smoke free vehicle, or failing to prevent smoking in a smoke free vehicle, enforcement officers will be able to issue a £50 fixed penalty notice.

If this isn’t paid and the case ends up in court, the maximum fine could rise to £800 for anyone caught smoking in a car with a child inside and a ‘level 4’ fine of up to £10,000 for a driver failing to prevent somebody else from smoking.

For drivers wanting to avoid paying potentially thousands, they would need to be able to prove how they took ‘reasonable steps to cause the person smoking to stop smoking, or they did not and could not have reasonably known the person was smoking, or that there was some other reasonable ground for not complying with the duty’.

The Department of Health claims the fines have been created based on those already in place for anyone caught smoking in public places – an act made illegal in 2007.

Public Health Minister Jane Ellison said: “The only effective way to protect children from secondhand smoke is to prevent them breathing it in in the first place. Exposure to secondhand smoke is a serious health hazard, especially to children and a significant number of children say that they are exposed to secondhand smoke in private vehicles.”

Deputy PM Nick Clegg – a smoker himself – unsurprisingly opposed the plans as they went through parliament earlier in the year, saying that ‘as an old-fashioned liberal’ he believed that ‘laws and legislation are not always the solution’.

However, campaign group Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) want the banning on smoking in vehicles where children under the age of 18 are present put into action prior to the next parliament.
Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Ash, said: “Cars are small tin boxes where concentrations of tobacco smoke can reach dangerous levels very quickly.

“As David Cameron himself has said, the time has come for it to be illegal to make children breathe in these toxic fumes. Laws stopping smoking in cars with children are popular with the public, with parliament and with children and we urge the Government to bring them into force before the next election.”

New York’s smoking laws due to be tightened

In the UK we have just come to the end of Stoptober, which finished on 28 October. The campaign was to encourage smokers to think about their health and the dangers of tobacco, in the hope that many will stop smoking for good.

However, across the Atlantic Ocean it seems our American counterparts are just as dedicated to reducing the number of people smoking with the fantastic news that New York City Council has voted to increase the minimum age for buying cigarettes from 18 to 21.

The current age limit of 18 years of age is a federal minimum that is standard in many places. Smokers are banned from smoking in any New York park and beach, in addition to the majority of the city’s restaurants.

The banning of anyone under the age of 21 purchasing or being sold cigarettes in New York City is amongst the strictest anti-smoking legislation in the U.S., and will be set at a higher age than nearly all other areas of the U.S. with the exception of just a few select places.

Those who lobbied for the change in the law have pointed to disappointing city statistics that show smoking rates for the youth of New York City has plateaued at 8.5% since 2007.

New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is a strong advocate for anti-smoking measures and he now has 30 days to sign-off the bill. After this, the bill will be activated 180 days later.

“We know that tobacco dependence can begin very soon after a young person first tries smoking so it’s critical that we stop young people from smoking before they ever start,” Bloomberg said in a statement.

Mr Bloomberg had initially attempted to pass through legislation that would force all shops to have cigarettes out of public view, but this plan was scrapped earlier this year.

Another measure to be pushed through by New York City council members will see a base price of $10.50 (£6.55) being set for a packet of cigarettes and to bolster law enforcement’s role in the trade of illegal tobacco sales and distribution.

“This will literally save many, many lives,” said city councillor James Gennaro, the bill’s sponsor, whose mother and father died from tobacco-related illnesses. “I’ve lived with it, I’ve seen it…but I feel good today.”

As expected, cigarette companies have hit back and argue youths who smoke will simply turn to the black market to obtain their cigarettes, whilst there are those who consider it absurd that a person deemed to be old/mature enough to serve in the military is then told they are not old enough to smoke.

“New York City already has the highest cigarette tax rate and the highest cigarette smuggling rate in the country,” said Bryan D. Hatchell, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which produces Camel and various other brands. “Those go hand in hand and this new law will only make the problem worse.”

Following yesterday’s vote, New York is now the largest city by some distance to ban the sake of cigarettes to 19 and 20-year-olds and a similar ban could occur in Hawaii, depending on the vote in December.

Presently, Needham, Massachusetts already has a minimum tobacco-buying age of 21 in, and this age will also be applied come January in nearby Canton, Massachusetts. New Jersey are also contemplating the same approach to buying cigarettes too.

Scottish cigarette display and vending machine ban begins on 29 April

From the 29 April this year, large shops will be banned from openly displaying cigarettes and smokers will no longer be able to purchase cigarettes from self-service vending machines as this will be outlawed too, the Scottish Government confirmed yesterday.

Smaller retailers however appear  to have a few years left before the new rules affect them as they will be given until 6 April, 2015 to fully abide by rules as laid out in the ‘Tobacco & Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Act 2010’.

The legislation, which was approved in Scottish Parliament on 27th January 2010 by a massive majority, includes key points that are clearly crafted at making it difficult for under-18s to obtain tobacco and lessen the appeal of smoking. It has also been designed to prevent people lighting-up at an early age and later developing a possible whole range of health conditions that are connected to smoking such as: cancer, heart disease, stroke, asthma, high blood pressure, erectile dysfunction and many more.

According to Scottish Governmental statistics, smoking kills approximately 13,500 Scots each year (equivalent to one in five of all deaths), it is the cause of around 33,500 hospital admissions and results in the NHS Scotland spending around £400 million each year to treat smoking-related health conditions.

The Tobacco & Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Act 2010:

. Bans the display of tobacco and smoking related products in shops.
. Bans the sale of tobacco from vending machines.
. Introduces a tobacco sales registration scheme, which will be free for retailers to join.
. Makes it an offence for under-18s to purchase tobacco.
. Makes it an offence for adults to buy tobacco for under 18s (proxy purchase).
. Gives trading standards officers powers to issue fixed penalty notices.
. Gives courts the power to ban retailers from selling tobacco where they have continually broken the law.
. The Act also amends the eligibility criteria for persons wishing to run a GP practice.

Only last December a legal challenge was launched by one of the world’s largest tobacco firms. The Supreme Court eventually dismissed the appeal by Imperial Tobacco, who claimed that the prohibiting of cigarette displays was strictly relevant to Westminster, and thus not within the scope of the Scottish Government. A committee of five judges unanimously ruled against Imperial, stating its arguments were not well-founded.

Michael Matheson, the Public Health Minister for the Scottish Government, said: “We know that reducing the number of people that smoke will have wide benefits for Scotland’s health and evidence shows that these bans will help prevent young people from taking up smoking. That is why we believe this is the right approach for Scotland and I am delighted that we are now in a position to implement these bans, which is a key step in maintaining Scotland’s position as a world leader on tobacco control. We have worked closely with retailers to set this date. We appreciate that smaller retailers need extra time to make the necessary changes and so we have decided that April 2015 represents a fair timescale for implementing the display ban for them.”

Cigarette packets to have larger health warnings

The European Union (EU) plan to introduce legislation prohibiting the sale of flavoured cigarettes, such as menthol. The EU wants to also make it mandatory for cigarette manufacturers to cover at least 75% of a packet of cigarettes with various health warnings for consumers. The aims will be the latest effort to discourage young people from starting smoking by making them more aware of the damage they are doing to their health, in addition to saving billions of pounds in the long-term with reduced diseases and hospital visits as a result of smoking-induced health conditions. Fortunately for older smokers, they will still be able to carry on enjoying flavoured pipe tobacco.

The proposed rules though do not go quite as far as those that came into play earlier this month in Australia, whereby all packets now have to be sold in plain packaging and carry graphic health warnings. However, governments in Britain and other countries will be given the go-ahead to enforce a similar policy should they wish.

The Changes will likely enrage tobacco companies who have already witness a sharp declined in cigarette sales in recent years and will fear that the stricter rules will hit their profits even more so and also effect markets in Asia and Africa.

Cigarette sales in the 27-nation EU bloc have decreased quite a lot over the last few years as more people are starting to realise the damages to health that smoking can do, and that it is just not worth it. Just some of the problems directly related to smoking include:

. Smoking accounts for 71% of all lung cancer deaths.
Smoking has been proven to be directly responsible for many types of cancer including: throat, lung, kidney, bladder, stomach, liver and cervix.
. Smokers are twice as likely to suffer from a heart attack in comparison to their non-smoking counterparts.
. Scientists say that the average smoker will lose 14 years of their life because of smoking.
. Sugar approximates to about 20% of a cigarette and many diabetics are unaware of this fact.
. Smoking not only increases the risk of a man being impotent, but it also damages sperm.
. Smokers who are also taking the contraceptive pill are about 20 times more likely to have a heart attack than someone who doesn’t smoke.
. Smokers are twice as likely to develop psoriasis as a non-smoker. Psoriasis is a common skin problem that results in patches of inflamed skin.
. Nicotine slows down your body’s ability to heal itself by dehydrating your skin.

Draft legislation for the proposed changes state: “Each unit packet shall carry combined health warnings (picture plus text). The combined warnings shall cover 75 per cent of the external area of both the front and back surface of the packet. However, a member state may maintain more stringent national provisions on grounds of overriding needs relating to the protection of public health.”
It is expected that cigarette companies will not go down without a fight though and already some have criticised the EU’s plans, arguing that graphic pictures showing the shocking effects of smoking will harm famous long-standing brands.

In fact, Reemtsma, the German subsidiary of Imperial Tobacco, has already hit out at the EU, blasting that the larger-scale warnings do not include new information for consumers and long established trademarks will be destroyed.

A spokesman for Reemtsma said: “Under the German constitution this is a major breach of our property rights and trademarks. It will not stop with tobacco, it will move on to alcohol and sweets. Anyone who can read knows the implied risks of smoking and existing health warnings are very clear. This is a step to a health dictatorship. Is that the future we want?”

Medical Specialists Pharmacy support the EU changes and we have reported on countless studies that have shown the awful detrimental impact that smoking just one cigarette each day can do to the body. This is summed up with the response from a European Commission spokesman in relation to the concerns about the legislation. The spokesman said: “We are aware of the concerns. Everything has been double-checked for the legal position and we can do it. Let’s not forget that 700,000 people die every year because of smoking.”