An enforcement officer is being employed in Nottingham to help stamp out sales of illegal and counterfeit tobacco and e-cigarettes. Nottingham City Council will be spending up to £116,355 on the tobacco control enforcement officer over a period of three years, alongside a further £120,000 for a part-time Nottinghamshire Police officer to help execute warrants and target problematic groups or individuals.
It comes as Nottingham is expected to miss the mark of being ‘smoke-free’ by 2030 by 10 years, after the Government set a target in 2019 saying less than 5% of the population should be continuing to smoke by 2030. The Government, too, is on track to miss its own targets by nine years and, in some of the most disadvantaged areas, it could be double this.
In Nottingham city, the wards with the highest smoking rates are Aspley, at 38.5%, and St Ann’s, at 36.7%. Smoking is estimated to kill 1,124 people across Nottinghamshire each year.
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In 2010/2011 there was a marked rise in the availability of counterfeit and illicit tobacco products throughout Nottingham and a team was subsequently established to tackle this. But in 2019 council redundancies and staff cuts impacted the team, making it more “reactive”.
The council said more effective regulation of illegal tobacco products and under age sales of e-cigarettes “will contribute greatly towards achieving our vision of having a smoke-free generation by 2040.” “Smoking is one of the largest causes of ill-health and early death in Nottingham city,” the council said in delegated decision documents.
“Tobacco is associated with significant economic burden on the society with a total smoking cost of £137.17million in the city. Intelligence suggests that the sale of counterfeit and illicit tobacco in Nottingham is a growing problem, however exact quantities in circulation or available in the city are unknown.
“A dedicated trading standards officer and seconded police officer are the best way to tackle this issue and achieve the best results in terms of enforcement, investigation and to increase smoking cessation in the city area.” During a health and well-being meeting on March 29, deputy director of public health at Nottingham City Council, David Johns, welcomed the funding for a new trading standards officer for tobacco control.
He said there were still “a significant number of adults in Nottingham city who are smoking”. While smoking rates have been reducing, in Nottingham around 16.5% of adults smoke.
This is higher than the national average of 13% in 2021. “We still have a significant number of pregnant women in Nottingham who are still smoking at the time of delivery,” he added.
“We have a burden on our hospital trusts with the biggest preventative cause of ill health in our city.” A ‘Smoking and Tobacco Control Alliance’ is now aiming to reduce the numbers of adults who smoke to 5% or lower across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire by 2035, as well as all children born in 2022 to have never picked up a cigarette by the time they turn 18 in 2040.
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