Creating a safe smoking free future for Suffolk

October saw the appointment of a new Prime Minister, an extra hour in bed as daylight saving time ended, and Stoptober – an NHS campaign to encourage people to ditch cigarettes.

Whilst Stoptober may be over for another year, you don’t need to wait to stop smoking. Why not quit today to start seeing the immediate health benefits of breaking up with tobacco?

After just eight hours of not smoking, the levels of harmful carbon monoxide in your blood will have halved. This will be gone completely once you’ve quit for 48 hours, enabling your lungs to clear out mucus and your sense of taste and smell to be greatly improved.

The health advantages don’t stop there – after one year without cigarettes, your risk of a heart attack will be half that of a smoker.

There are also the financial benefits to consider, with someone who smokes around 20 cigarettes a day set to save more than £3,500 per year by giving up the habit.

Although it may be a challenge to quit at first, dedicated support is available from OneLifeSuffolk, who run a specialised stop smoking service, accessible by visiting One Life Suffolk or calling 01473 718193.

The service can help users to access e-cigarettes and dispel some of the myths about vaping, which is recognised by the Government as being the number one tool used by smokers to help them quit effectively.

Public Health England also acknowledges that vaping is significantly less harmful than conventional smoking, with e-cigarettes not producing tar or carbon monoxide, two of the most damaging elements in tobacco smoke.

However, there is a danger posed by e-cigarettes and vaping liquids which do not meet the UK’s stringent safety and quality regulations designed to protect consumers.

Fortunately for Suffolk’s residents, our Trading Standards team remains committed to stopping the sale of such items.

Hundreds of unsafe e-cigarettes and vaping liquids have been seized recently during random spot checks on shops across the county.

These items did not comply with the Tobacco and Related Product Regulations 2016 and contained incorrect health warnings or images. The packaging of some of the vaping liquids sold also made the product resemble food, with this mirroring popular sweet branding – enticing impressionable young people into buying the liquids.

Consumers can protect themselves by only buying e-cigarettes and vaping liquids from reputable retailers. These should be sold in proper packaging – liquids must be in childproof bottles displaying nicotine warnings – and come with an accompanying safety leaflet.

If this is not the case, it may mean that the products do not comply with regulations and could be dangerous, so should be disposed of as a precaution.

Sadly, it’s not just unsafe e-cigarettes and vaping liquids that Trading Standards is trying to stop, as the sale of these items to underage children is also on the increase both in Suffolk and nationally.

Many young people may think vaping is harmless fun, not realising that some e-cigarettes contain nicotine, a highly addictive substance that can be hard to stop using once you have started. Evidence also suggests that the brain in adolescence is more sensitive to the effects of nicotine.

It is vital to protect young brains and lungs, meaning that the sale of nicotine vaping products to anyone under 18 is illegal, as is adults buying them on behalf of under-18s.

But, as officers from Suffolk Trading Standards have discovered, this has not stopped some retailers from selling to those who are underage.

Doing so can come with a hefty fine of £2,500, making it even more crucial for businesses to train their staff to ask for ID if the person buying e-cigarettes or vaping liquids looks under 25. This will protect the retailer from the severe consequences of making underage sales and help to look after the health of our county’s young people.

Parents can play their part by reminding their children that vaping is a way for adults to stop smoking and not something for non-smokers, especially children and young people, to try.

If you suspect that a shop is selling unsafe e-cigarettes and vaping liquids or making sales of age-restricted products to children, you can report this in confidence to Suffolk Trading Standards via the Citizens Advice Consumer helpline on 0808 223 1133.

Together we can help make Suffolk a smoking free county and protect future generations.