2026 Session 1 Seminars

Dr Alex Peck will outline the Government's position in relation to vaping and nicotine products and provide an overview of the actions that it is taking to 1) support adult smokers to quit and 2) prevent youth uptake.

The UK faces considerable and persistent public health challenges. Recent data on healthy life expectancy indicate that, among comparable countries, only the US population spends fewer years in good health than people in the UK. There are multiple reasons for this, including economic factors, obesity and declines in mental health, particularly among young people. Yet the understandable focus on these important causes overlooks a persistent and related one - the ongoing health harms of tobacco and the disproportionate burden borne by particular groups. This presentation will outline why addressing smoking must remain one of our most important public health priorities and why continued efforts are required, alongside vigilance and appropriate policies relating to the emerging health harms from other nicotine products.

The media love to report scare stories about vaping. It’s no wonder so many smokers believe vaping is just as harmful. Who’s to blame?

The Science Media Centre exists to improve media reporting on controversial topics. However, poor-quality science leads to poor reporting; scientific journals provide journalists with a steady stream of weak and misleading studies, sometimes hyped by the press officers promoting them and by researchers themselves.

As public understanding of the relative risks of smoking versus alternative nicotine products continues to be at odds with the best evidence, Tom Sheldon will argue that it remains essential for responsible scientists to engage with journalists, helping them translate evidence for the public in a neutral way and to critically assess the robustness of new findings and claims.

Tom will explore the relationship between science and the media, what we can all do, why it's not always the media's fault, and some of the battles good science has won…as well as those it’s still losing. He'll also try his best to persuade you not to feel too disheartened – but to explain why the fight for accurate media reporting can’t be won until research science gets its own house in order.

As the UK moves towards a smokefree generation, understanding the characteristics and needs of people who continue to smoke becomes increasingly important. This talk will examine the remaining smoking population in England, explore why prevalence may be higher than official estimates suggest, and identify patterns in quitting activity and barriers that may shape future progress towards a smokefree society. Drawing on data from the Smoking Toolkit Study, it will explore patterns of quitting activity, the barriers faced by people who continue to smoke, and where unmet need for cessation support remains greatest. It will consider what these trends mean for efforts to accelerate progress towards a smokefree future, highlighting the importance of addressing persistent inequalities and ensuring that policies designed to prevent future uptake are complemented by effective support for the millions of adults who still smoke.

Few questions in public health are as contested as what to do about e-cigarettes, and much of the conflict arises because four forces are at play, with three crowding out the one that matters most.

Politics concerns the political tensions: harm reduction set against precaution and abstinence, and the divergence between jurisdictions: Britain's comparatively liberal, quit-aid framing and its moves on disposables and a generational sales ban; Australia's prescription-only model; the American authorisation regime; and the perennial tension between protecting young people and helping adult smokers to stop.

Profit relates to the commercial determinants: the tobacco industry's absorption of the category, the independent and disposables sectors, illicit supply, and the way the pursuit of margin shapes not only products (flavours, nicotine salts, devices engineered for appeal) but also the arguments advanced on every side.

Propaganda involves the systematic distortion of the evidence base, including the steady rise in the mistaken belief that vaping is as dangerous as smoking, the misattribution of the US EVALI outbreak, gateway rhetoric and youth moral panic, alongside the overclaiming of vaping's champions.

Public health concerns what arguably should be the focus: what the evidence actually shows, and the fact that good policy here means minimising harm rather than allowing harm in the vain service of eliminating it.

This presentation will explore how, when politics, profit and propaganda are allowed to crowd out the public-health calculus, both smokers and non-smokers lose.