About the Coalition
Our focus -
To put the all members of public’s right to mental and physical health ahead of companies’ right to make money.
The Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty’s recommendation on vaping is simple and sensible - ‘if you don’t smoke, don’t vape’. But like ‘Drink Responsibly’ and ‘Gamble Aware’, words are meaningless without robust prevention policies, regulation, support and funding.
We aim to unite concerned individuals and organisations to put the public’s right to health, into practice in relation to vapes, pouches and snus. We will start by campaigning on the following issues:
Re-attach smoking to vaping, tax vapes to make them out of reach of children and have vapes phased out alongside the legal restrictions on cigarettes with a medically agreed lag-time.
Ensure they are only sold alongside cigarettes, below the counter with no point of sale, with plain packaging and restricted flavours.
Enforce prevention of promotion and sponsorship of vapes in a lifestyle setting and all environmental claims.
Supporting accessible and engaging guidance public health information for non-vapers, particularly for children schools and young adults.
Provide immediate funding for vaping un-addiction in local councils the NHS and cessation charities.
What we will do
Develop a Coalition of like-minded groups and individuals
A number of individuals and organisations have contacted us because their concerns chimed with ours and they supported our approach, our actions and the recommendations we have given to government under the banner of Action on Recreational Vaping over the last year.
We will develop a coalition of the groups to advocate for an end to recreational vaping.
Advocacy:
We will amplify the voices of young people and similar concerned organisations to government.
The UK government is currently considering regulation which we think is too narrow and will not address the growing problem of recreational vaping in children and particularly young people.
We will advocate for a rethink of this regulation and work with others to explore the issues in more depth and promote appropriate recommendations to MP’s, parliament and stakeholders.
Communication
We will communicate about the issues and concerns of the coalition widely in media and social media.
About this project
This Coalition has been initiated by UK not-for-profit SocietyInside. It is part of a larger piece of work on The Addiction Economy which seeks to understand the development and strategies of companies which do not seek just to entice individuals to use their products, but to use chemical ingredients and psychological techniques to addict them.
We are exploring how other sectors, in addition to cigarettes and vapes, have applied chemically addictive ingredients in mainstream products for commercial gain. Opioids is an obvious one, but also think alcohol and most recently ultra-processed foods are shown to be effective based on their physically addictive properties.
Then there are those sectors which seek to addict by manipulating human psychology. Think gambling, social media, computer gaming.
The project will identify common themes, explore criteria of addiction and consider how society can respond better than we have to date to prevent these addictions, many of which are cause the largest preventative health and mental health problems we face.
SocietyInside is a UK based not-for-profit company focused on the promotion of a pro-society approach to innovation and regulation rather than for the making of money or scientific kudos. For more of on our work see www.societyinside.com
We are keen to discuss this concept with expert organisations in all areas. If this is of interest, please contact Hilary on hilary@societyinside.com
Funding
The initiative is currently self-funded by SocietyInside. We are currently seeking partnerships and grant funding to take forward the work of the Coalition.
To support our work and hear more about our plans please contact Hilary on hilary@societyinside.com