Tobacco Harm Reduction and Electronic Cigarettes: What's Happening and Where Next? 17 August 2015

We are pleased to invite you to:

The Institute of Health and Wellbeing Maurice Bloch Annual Lecture Series 2015/16

Title: Tobacco Harm Reduction and Electronic Cigarettes: What's Happening and Where Next?

Presenter: Professor Linda Bauld

Date: Monday 17 August 2015

Time: 11am tea and coffee will be served 30mins beforehand

Venue: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, Level 5 Suite

Chair: Professor Laurence Moore

Abstract:

'Tobacco harm reduction and electronic cigarettes: what's happening and where next'

Smoking rates in the UK have halved since the 1970s, but one in five adults still smokes. In 2013, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published guidance on tobacco harm reduction, recommending alternative approaches for smokers who find it particularly hard to stop and who may benefit from cutting down en route to quitting and/or from long term access to cleaner forms of nicotine (such as NRT) to prevent relapse. The UK remains the only country in the world to have such guidance. It also touched on electronic cigarettes, new nicotine delivery devices not currently licensed as medicines and whose popularity has soared since 2010 - there are now over 2.6 million users in Great Britain alone. Both NICE and the MHRA have made it clear that using e-cigarettes is safer than continued smoking, and evidence is accumulating of their effectiveness for smoking cessation. Yet considerable controversy surrounds their use and forthcoming Scottish and EU legislation will regulate them in a number of different ways. This presentation will outline what we know about e-cigarettes, their implications for tobacco control, and speculate on what the future may hold for smokers, vapers and children who currently neither smoke nor vape.

Biography

Linda Bauld is Professor of Health Policy, Director of the Institute for Social Marketing and Dean of Research Impact at the University of Stirling. She is also Deputy Director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies and serves as Cancer Research UK’s cancer prevention champion (the CRUK/BUPA Chair in Behavioural Research for Cancer Prevention). Linda has a background in applied policy research and her research focuses on the evaluation of public health interventions. She has conducted studies on drug and alcohol use, inequalities in health and, most notably, on tobacco control and smoking cessation. She is a former scientific adviser on tobacco control to the UK government and currently chairs a number of policy and research committees in Scotland and England.

Research Interests: Public Health policy, tobacco control, smoking cessation, drug and alcohol policy