DHSC plans clampdown on ‘harmful’ South Asian chewed tobacco products

The cancer-causing chewed tobacco products used by Britain’s South Asian community  (paan – tobacco in its raw form with betel leaf and areca, sold in packets and known as “gutka”) face a Government clampdown 16 years after scientists warned of the dangerous contents. The announcement came in a response to a Parliamentary Question in which the health department said it is now looking to regulate “the most harmful tobacco products” including the “smokeless tobacco products currently available in the UK”.

Around half a million South Asians use chewed tobacco with use particularly high among women. They suffer from nearly four times more oral cancer than the rest of population.

In 2006 Government chemists found that many of these products contained high levels of carcinogens. In a paper which analysed the results Professors Ann McNeill and Robert West said chewed tobacco was “a major cause of oral cancer” and urged the government to set product standards.

Until now, the Government has resisted that and other calls to create standards. However, just a week before the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) statement in a letter published in The Times, the Government’s former Drugs Tsar, Professor David Nutt, accused the DHSC of “reverse racism” over “lethal” South Asian chewed tobacco.

Professor Nutt has now written about the problem to Javed Khan who has been commissioned by DHSC to write a report on the health disparities caused by tobacco which will be published on 22 April. That report will influence DHSC’s forthcoming Tobacco Control Plan, which is due to be published at the end of this year.