Gordon Kochane, consultant in Public Health, Shropshire Council

The Board received the report of the Public Health Consultant – copy attached to the signed Minutes – which provided an update on development of a Position Statement on Underage Vaping for those working in educational establishments, professionals and others working with children and young people who vape.

The Assistant Director of Integration and Healthy People introduced and amplified the report which updated the Board in relation to the work of the Task and Finish Group who had been leading on this and who have developed a Position Statement.  The report also detailed some of the additional work that had been happening including looking to do further comms directly with children and young people and with parents and carers and were really keen to get that voice of the child in that piece of work to help develop resources that were appropriate for the Shropshire population.

The Task and Finish Group were really keen to develop a clear understanding of where across Shropshire younger people were using vapes along with the age profile around that and there would be three aspects to that, a question will be included in the Children and Young People’s JSNA, focus groups directly with children and young people, and through partnership work with Shropshire Community NHS Trust and the Public Health Nursing Service they will be including a question on vaping in their school survey.  This would help to build a picture of what was happening locally.

The Assistant Director of Integration and Healthy People reported that some national resources had now been published which would be looked at and made use of as part of this Comms work.  She also reported on a national call for evidence around children and young people and vaping and the Public Health Consultant was coordinating the response for Shropshire, and she requested Board members contact him with their thoughts so they could be built into the response.

Turning to the Position Statement, the Assistant Director of Integration and Healthy People drew attention to the Shropshire Stance which included a joint statement from the Executive Director of Health, the Executive Director of People and the Chief Medical Officer for NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin which recognised the links with the exploitation agenda and the Trading Standards issue.  The Position Statement gave a very firm view for Shropshire that vapes were not for children, there was no evidence around the use of vapes for children and young people so the safest and healthiest option was not to smoke or vape.  The only evidence around vapes was in relation to them being a quit aid for adult smokers and that evidence was only in the short to medium-term and so the long-term effects of continuing to use vapes were unknown.

A brief discussion ensued.  The Portfolio Holder for Children and Education requested a copy of the literature once ready so that she could share it and help get the message out because the issue of vaping was very real in Shropshire.  The Executive Director for People thanked the Task and Finish Group for focusing on this very real issue that we have in Shropshire and she endorsed the Position Statement which would be circulated to all schools and organisations that work with children and young people.

She stressed the importance of the Health and Wellbeing Board supporting the Local Government Association’s call for action to Central Government for vapes to be in plain packaging, to be out of sight and for mandatory age of sale signage on vaping products, along with a ban on free samples.

RESOLVED: 

To note the contents of the report and support the LGA’s call for action banning free samples and for vapes to be in plain packaging.

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