Global crises disrupt effort to get millions to quit smoking, report says
Governments had planned to reduce smoking rates among people over 15 by 30% between 2010 and 2025 as part of an action plan tied to global sustainable development targets agreed in 2015.
But the timeline to achieve the goal was extended an extra five years in 2024 as other priorities pushed countries to divert resources away from implementing a World Health Organization treaty on tobacco control signed by 168 countries.
"This ... delay represents an estimated 95 million additional tobacco users, who would otherwise have quit by 2025," said the report, submitted to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, which oversees global sustainable development.
While governments have succeeded in reducing the number of smokers, the failure to hit the 30% reduction target means that 1,207,800,000 people are still smoking globally, instead of the target of 1,112,400,000, based on a Reuters calculation using smoking rates and population figures provided in the report.
Published by Action on Smoking and Health Canada and endorsed by the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, Cancer Research UK and others, the report warned the delays could result in millions of additional deaths from tobacco use if sustained.
The U.N. has already acknowledged that funding shortfalls, geopolitical tensions and pandemic-linked disruptions have pushed the world off track on most of the 17 wide-ranging sustainable development goals. Those goals aim, among other things, to reduce poverty and hunger and increase access to healthcare and education.
The groups that endorsed ASH Canada's report urged governments to redouble their efforts on tobacco control policies such as tax increases and smoking bans.
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BBC News
14 minutes ago
- BBC News
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James Cook Scotland editor • @BBCJamesCook BBC Nicola Sturgeon's memoir Frankly is now on sale, slightly earlier than expected after newspaper serialisations and interviews teased some tantalising extracts. True to its title, the book has Scotland's former first minister writing candidly about the highs and lows of her time in office including challenges she says had a serious impact on her mental health. So with the full text now available, what are the key things we have learned? Transgender controversy After more than eight years in power, and eight election victories, Sturgeon saw final months in office marred by rows about trans issues. It was, she writes in her memoir, a time of "rancour and division". Sturgeon now admits to having regrets about the process of trying to legislate to make it easier to legally change gender, saying she has asked herself whether she should have "hit the pause button" to try to reach consensus. "With hindsight, I wish I had," she writes, although she continues to argue in favour of the general principle of gender self-identification. Spindrift Isla Bryson was jailed in 2023 after being convicted of rape Sturgeon also addresses the case of double rapist Adam Graham who was initially sent to a female prison after self-identifying as a woman called Isla Bryson. It was, writes Sturgeon, a development "that gave a human face to fears that until then had been abstract for most people". As first minister she sometimes struggled to articulate her position on the case and to decide which, if any, pronoun to use to describe Bryson. "When confronted with the question 'Is Isla Bryson a woman?' I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights," she writes. "Because I failed to answer 'yes', plain and simple... I seemed weak and evasive. Worst of all, I sounded like I didn't have the courage to stand behind the logical conclusion of the self-identification system we had just legislated for. "In football parlance, I lost the dressing room." Speaking to ITV News on Monday Sturgeon said she now believed a rapist "probably forfeits the right" to identify as a woman. JK Rowling JK Rowling posted a selfie of herself wearing a T-shirt describing Sturgeon as a "destroyer of women's rights" The former first minister also criticises her highest profile opponent on the gender issue, Harry Potter author JK Rowling, for posting a selfie in a T-shirt bearing the slogan "Nicola Sturgeon, destroyer of women's rights". "It resulted in more abuse, of a much more vile nature, than I had ever encountered before. It made me feel less safe and more at risk of possible physical harm," she writes. Sturgeon adds that "it was deeply ironic that those who subjected me to this level of hatred and misogynistic abuse often claimed to be doing so in the interests of women's safety". Rowling has been approached for comment. Her relationship with Alex Salmond Sturgeon's mentor and predecessor as first minster, Alex Salmond, is mentioned dozens of times in the book, often in unflattering terms which reflect their estrangement after he was accused of sexual offences. Salmond won a judicial review of the Scottish government's handling of complaints against him and in 2020 was cleared of all 13 charges but his reputation was sullied by revelations in court about inappropriate behaviour with female staff. Sturgeon lambasts Salmond's claim that he was the victim of a conspiracy, saying there was no obvious motive for women to have concocted false allegations which would then have required "criminal collusion" with politicians, civil servants, police and prosecutors. "He impugned the integrity of the institutions at the heart of Scottish democracy," she writes, adding: "He was prepared to traumatise, time and again, the women at the centre of it all". The claims have been angrily rejected by Salmond's allies. The former SNP leader died of a heart attack in North Macedonia last year, aged 69. The independence referendum Nicola Sturgeon recalls a "totally uncharacteristic sense of optimism" as Scotland prepared to vote on whether to become an independent nation on 18 September 2014. It was arguably the defining event of her professional life and, in her view, a chance to "create a brighter future for generations to come". The campaign was tough, she says, partly because of what she calls unbalanced coverage by the British media including the BBC and partly because Salmond left her to do much of the heavy lifting. "It felt like we were trying to push a boulder up hill," she writes. PA Media Sturgeon claims Alex Salmond showed little interest in the "detail" of the independence white paper A key period in the lead-up to the poll was her preparation, as deputy first minister, of a white paper setting out the case for independence. At one point, she says, the magnitude of the task left her in "utter despair" and "overcome by a feeling of sheer impossibility". "I ended up on the floor of my home office, crying and struggling to breathe. It was definitely some kind of panic attack," she writes. Sturgeon says Salmond "showed little interest in the detail" of the document and she was "incandescent" when he flew to China shortly before publication without having read it. "He promised he would read it on the plane. I knew his good intention would not survive contact with the first glass of in-flight champagne," she writes. Operation Branchform Sturgeon describes her "utter disbelief" and despair when police raided her home in Glasgow and arrested her husband, Peter Murrell, on 5 April 2023. "With police tents all around it, it looked more like a murder scene than the place of safety it had always been for me. I was devastated, mortified, confused and terrified." In the weeks that followed she says she felt like she "had fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel". Sturgeon calls her own arrest two months later as part of the inquiry into SNP finances known as Operation Branchform "the worst day" of her life. She was exonerated. Murrell, the former SNP chief executive, has been charged with embezzlement. The couple announced they were separating earlier this year. Getty Images Sturgeon described her house as looking like a murder scene Leading Scotland during the pandemic ForSturgeon, the coronavirus pandemic which struck the world five years ago still provokes "a torrent of emotion". Leading Scotland through Covid was "almost indescribably" hard and "took a heavy toll, physically and mentally", writes the former first minister. She says she will be haunted forever by the thought that going into lockdown earlier could have saved more lives and, in January 2024, after she wept while giving evidence to the UK Covid inquiry, she "came perilously close to a breakdown". "For the first time in my life, I sought professional help. It took several counselling sessions before I was able to pull myself back from the brink," she writes. PA Media Nicola Sturgeon appeared visibly upset when giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry Misogyny and sexism Scathing comments about the inappropriate behaviour of men are scattered throughout the book. "Like all women, since the dawn of time, I have faced misogyny and sexism so endemic that I didn't always recognize it as such," Sturgeon writes on the very first page. One grim story, from the first term of the Scottish Parliament which ran from 1999 to 2003, stands out. Sturgeon says a male MSP from a rival party taunted her with the nickname "gnasher" as he spread a false rumour that she had injured a boyfriend during oral sex. "On the day I found out about the story, I cried in one of the toilets in the Parliament office complex," she writes. She said it was only years later, after #MeToo, that she realised this had been "bullying of an overtly sexual nature, designed to humiliate and intimidate, to cut a young woman down to size and put her in her place". Her personal life PA Media Parts of the memoir are deeply personal. Nicola Sturgeon says she may have appeared to be a confident and combative leader but underneath she is a "painfully shy" introvert who has "always struggled to believe in herself." She writes in detail about the "excruciating pain" and heartbreak of suffering a miscarriage after becoming pregnant at the age of 40. "Later, what I would feel most guilty about were the days I had wished I wasn't pregnant," she says. Sturgeon touches on the end of her marriage, saying "I love him" but the strain of the past couple of years" was "impossible to bear." She also writes about her experience of the menopause, explaining that "one of my deepest anxieties was that I would suddenly forget my words midway through an answer" at First Minister's Question Time. "My heart would race whenever I was on my feet in the Chamber which was debilitating and stressful," she says. And she addresses "wild stories" about her having a torrid lesbian affair with a French diplomat by saying the rumours were rooted in homophobia. "The nature of the insult was water off a duck's back," she writes. "Long-term relationships with men have accounted for more than thirty years of my life, but I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary. Moreover, sexual relationships should be private matters." What the future holds PA Media Sturgeon loves books and has often appeared at literary events such as Aye Write in Glasgow Nicola Sturgeon has a few regrets. These include pushing hard for a second independence referendum immediately after the UK voted — against Scotland's wishes — to leave the EUn, and branding the 2024 general election as a "de facto referendum" on independence. But now, she says, she is "excited about the next phase" of her life which she jokingly refers to as her "delayed adolescence". "I might live outside of Scotland for a period," Sturgeon writes. "Suffocating is maybe putting it too strongly, but I feel sometimes I can't breathe freely in Scotland," she tells the BBC's Newscast podcast. "This may shock many people to hear," she continues, "but I love London." She is also considering writing a novel. Nicola Sturgeon concludes her memoir by saying she believes Scotland will be independent within 20 years, insisting she will never stop fighting for that outcome and adding: "That, after all, is what my life has been about."
Sky News
22 minutes ago
- Sky News
What does the data tell us about road traffic accidents in the UK?
Under "tougher" plans to tackle road deaths and injuries in England and Wales, the government has announced measures to make over-70s take compulsory eye tests every three years or lose their driving licence. But are they really needed? Motorists over the age of 70 already self-report their medical fitness to drive every three years, and British roads are safer now than they've ever been. In 2023, the latest year for which the Department for Transport has published data, the casualty rate on British roads fell to 398 per billion vehicle miles. It's the first time that figure has been under 400, and has halved since just 2006. In 1960, the casualty rate was 10 times higher than it is now. The total number of people killed on the UK's roads also reached a record low in 2023, other than the COVID-affected years of 2020 and 2021. There were 1,624 people killed in total, just under half of which were in cars. This figure has plateaued somewhat since 2010, however, after rapid improvements between 2006 and 2010. There was a similar plateau between 1994 and 2006 before the last significant piece of road safety legislation was introduced. The 2006 Road Safety Act introduced higher fines and more points for the most severe speeding offences, as well as vastly expanding the use of speed awareness courses. It was also the first year that people could get points on their licence for using their phone. In the four years that followed, there was a 40% decrease in deaths among road users. In the 13 years since then, it's fallen just 12%. There had been a slight rise in deaths among older drivers for a few years between 2014 and 2019, but that has started to fall again now. There are now fewer deaths among over-70s compared with either the under-30s, people aged 30-49, or those between 50 and 69. In 2019, there were a similar number of deaths among people of each of these age cohorts. Academic studies have previously found that older people are also more likely to develop symptoms of depression, be admitted to care facilities, and even have a higher mortality rate, once they stop driving. The academics found that those links remained even after adjusting for other factors like baseline health and cognitive ability. Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said: "It is certainly good for our eye health as we age to have a regular eye test - every two years the NHS advises - but this doesn't automatically mean that a compulsory eye test at age 70 is appropriate. People can develop eye problems at any age so why confine such an approach only to those aged 70 and not to younger drivers too? "From the data we have seen, there is no reason to suppose that eye problems lie behind a significant proportion of accidents. While there may be a case for introducing a regular mandatory eye test for drivers of all ages, it is not clear that this would have a big impact on the numbers of serious accidents involving older drivers." Are younger drivers a danger to themselves? Edmund King, president of the Automobile Association, said that the government's strategy is "much overdue", while pointing to the figures showing that the number of road deaths have plateaued since 2010. He said that making vision checks compulsory for older drivers was a "practical step that can make a real difference", but added that failing to introduce a six-month limit on new drivers transporting passengers of a similar age is "a major oversight". A limit like this has been active in parts of Australia since 2007. Research by road safety charity Brake says that, in the UK, around one in five drivers crash within a year of passing their test. The Department for Transport data also shows that younger people are also significantly more likely to die as passengers compared to people in other age groups. There has also been a suggestion that younger drivers are more likely to die as a result of not wearing seatbelts. More than a third of 17-29-year-olds who die on the roads didn't have their seatbelts on. But the same is true of 30-59 year olds. There is a significant difference between men and women however - 31% of men who died did so without wearing a seatbelt, compared with just 11% of women. That also means that 89% of women who died on the roads did so despite wearing a seatbelt, perhaps adding to evidence that suggests that seatbelts offer better protection to adult men. Drink-driving Since 2014, Scotland has had a lower drink-drive limit than the rest of the UK. The government's new proposals would reduce the drink-drive limit in England and Wales to the same level as in Scotland - 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, instead of the current level of 80mg of alcohol. For an average-sized man, that means they would be over the limit after one pint of beer, instead of after two. In diverging from the other nations in the UK, the new standards in Scotland aligned with most of Europe. It seems to have had some impact. The number of collisions involving drink drivers has fallen by more than 40% in Scotland since it was introduced, compared with 20% in England over the same time period, and 38% in Wales. The improvement is less pronounced when it comes to the most serious drink-driving road accidents, though. They are down just 7% since 2014. Where are the safest, and most dangerous, places to drive? The Isle of Wight has the highest current fatality rate, after accounting for how much driving people do. There were 18 deaths per billion vehicle miles on the island in 2023. Next was Blackpool, with 16. The central London boroughs of Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Lambeth were the only other local authorities with a rate higher than 10. At the other end of the scale, Stockport (Greater Manchester), Thurrock (Essex) and Nottingham each had fewer than one death per billion vehicle miles. When it comes to accidents that included not just deaths but also serious injuries, London has the worst record. Drivers in Westminster were most likely to end up in a serious collision, but the nine most dangerous local authorities in Great Britain were all London boroughs. Bradford completed the bottom 10. Bath and North East Somerset was the safest area, although three Welsh areas - Bridgend, Neath Port Talbot and Cardiff - joined South Gloucestershire in the top five. Scottish drivers were among the most likely to avoid being in crashes altogether. Eight of the 10 local authorities with the lowest overall collision rate were north of the border, although Rutland in the East Midlands had the lowest overall rate. The top 20 areas with the most collisions per mile driven were all in London. How does driving in the UK compare with other countries? The UK is one of the safest places to drive in Europe. Only Norway and Sweden had a lower rate of road deaths per head of population in 2023 than the UK's 25 deaths per million people. The figures in places like Italy, Greece and Portugal were more than twice as high. There aren't any directly comparable figures for 2023 for the US, but in 2022 their death rate from driving was five times as high as the UK, and 50% higher than the worst performing European country - Bulgaria. The Data and Forensics
The Guardian
23 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Anger, fear and a total rejection of politics: the Palestine Action protest was a snapshot of Britain today
In the third month of this tense, parched summer, the British state is under severe strain. Stripped of resources by 14 years of reckless rightwing government, contorting itself to maintain relations with ever more extreme regimes abroad, expanding its security powers at home through ever more tortured logic, regarded by ever more voters with contempt, a once broadly respected institution is increasingly struggling to maintain its authority. You could see the strain on the faces of some of the police officers, reddening with exertion in the sun, as they arrested 521 people in Parliament Square on Saturday for displaying pieces of paper or cardboard with a seven-word message supporting the proscribed group Palestine Action. It was one of the biggest mass arrests in London's history. The many protesters who refused to be led away had to be lifted off the ground, one by one, without the exercise looking too coercive in front of the cameras. Then their floppy, uncooperative forms had to be carried by clusters of officers through the hostile crowd – to chants of 'genocide police!', 'shame on you!' and 'fascist scum!' – to a ring of police vans at the square's perimeter, which were then sometimes obstructed by further protesters, before they eventually drove away. So many officers were needed that some had come from Wales. When Tony Blair's Labour government introduced Welsh devolution 26 years ago, in times of more harmony and less scarcity, cooperation between the nations was probably not envisaged in this form. On Saturday, so that the capital's police custody system was not overwhelmed, those arrested were taken to 'makeshift outdoor processing centres', the Observer reported – as if during a general breakdown of law and order. Some of those released on bail then reportedly went back to the protest. 'Given the numbers of people arrested,' said the Metropolitan police, 'it would have been entirely unrealistic for officers to recognise individuals who returned to [the square].' 'Entirely unrealistic' is not a reassuring phrase for those who believe that the government's approach to Palestine Action is practical and based on sound law. If charged, those arrested will enter the overburdened criminal justice system and then, if found guilty, Britain's bursting jails. It's likely that further supporters of Palestine Action will follow. The organiser of Saturday's protest, Defend Our Juries, has promised a sustained campaign of 'mass, public defiance', to make the proscription of Palestine Action 'unworkable'. This amendment to the 2000 Terrorism Act – a less benign legacy of Blair than devolution – states that anyone who 'wears, carries or displays an article' publicly, 'in such a way… as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of' Palestine Action could be jailed for up to six months; and anyone who 'invites support for' the organisation could be jailed for up to 14 years. Authoritarianism and austerity have risen together in Britain, as the relatively generous public spending of the Blair years has receded and new waves of radical activism have formed over the climate crisis and the destruction of Palestine. Yet the possibility that austerity will make authoritarianism unaffordable, with too much of the government's funds swallowed up by the security state, does not seem prominent in Labour's thinking. The fact that Keir Starmer is a former director of public prosecutions and that the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has for many years been one of parliament's leading authorities on national security, has given them a lot of faith in law-and-order solutions to political problems. The Parliament Square protesters took a different view. They had been advised by Defend Our Juries not to give quotes to journalists, to avoid distracting from the protest's focus on the Palestine Action proscription and the genocide in Gaza. Yet the dozen protesters I spoke to informally all talked about Britain's police and politicians without the slightest deference, as part of a system that was failing, practically and ethically, to address our era's escalating crises. As the arrests went on and on, through the hot afternoon and into the evening, many of the protesters barely moved, but kept facing the same way, sitting on the ground with their placards carefully displayed and their backs to the Houses of Parliament. Partly, this was to provide a globally resonant image, but it was also to dramatise their rejection of the will of the Commons, where only 26 MPs voted against Palestine Action's proscription last month. Parliament likes to see itself as a historic defender of freedom and liberty, yet when panics about subversive groups are under way, its liberalism often evaporates. While the Commons narrows its views in times of crisis, the electorate sometimes does the opposite. Half of those arrested in the square were aged 60 or older – usually the most politically conservative demographic. Many had had middle-class careers in public service. Chatting among themselves on the grass in the quieter moments between police surges, they could almost have been taking a break between events at a book festival. One woman sat on a camping stool, wearing a panama hat. When I introduced myself, she said: 'I don't like the Guardian, I read the Telegraph.' The last time Labour was in office, opposition to its more draconian and militaristic policies also emerged across the political spectrum. The more rightwing members of this opposition can be questioned: are they as outraged when Tory governments support wars or suspend civil liberties? My sense is not. But either way, broad opposition erodes a government's legitimacy. At the 2005 election, after the Terrorism Act and the Iraq war, Blair still won, yet with almost a third fewer votes than when he came to power. With Labour more unpopular now, Starmer can less afford to alienate anti-war voters – much as his most illiberal subordinates might want to. Yet any electoral consequences from the scenes in Parliament Square, and from likely sequels, are hardly the only things at stake in the Palestine Action controversy. At mid-afternoon on Saturday, with the police cordon tightening around us, I got talking to two elderly protesters who had watched people being arrested beside them. 'I'm in two minds about carrying on with this,' one of them said, opening and closing her piece of cardboard with its illegal message. Defiant earlier, she now seemed frightened. The legally safe space for protest in Britain is shrinking again. Meanwhile in Gaza, there's no safe space for anything at all. Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
