This article examines evidence of large-scale bot interference in the UK Government’s 2023 consultation on creating a smokefree generation and tackling youth vaping. Using consultation records and Freedom of Information data, the authors found that 90,835 of 118,756 submissions (76%) were identified by the Department of Health and Social Care as fraudulent, automated responses. Nearly all of these bot-generated submissions opposed proposed restrictions on disposable vapes, meaning the consultation results would have appeared strongly anti-regulation if the bots had not been detected and removed. After excluding the fraudulent responses, almost 80% of valid respondents supported restrictions on disposable vape sales. The study highlights the growing risk that coordinated automated campaigns pose to public health policymaking and argues for stronger safeguards to protect the integrity of government consultations.

This review explores the impact of pharmaceutical industry information and promotional strategies aimed at prescribers, bringing together evidence on how interactions between the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare professionals can influence prescribing decisions, contributing to important conversations around transparency, evidence-informed practice, and the responsible use of medicines. This is an important addition to the evidence base and reflects ongoing efforts to strengthen understanding of the factors that shape healthcare decision-making.

This BMJ Public Health study finds that effective public health policies for tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy foods are most likely when different types of evidence are combined as an “evidence jigsaw”, with different evidence supporting different stages of policymaking. Research on industry practices was seen as particularly influential, especially in tobacco control, while collaboration between researchers, advocates and policymakers helped ensure evidence was translated into policy action. The authors conclude that combining multiple forms of evidence with strong knowledge-sharing processes can strengthen regulation of unhealthy commodities.

This article argues that the UK’s Tobacco and Vapes Act, which prevents anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 from ever being legally sold tobacco, is significant not only as a tobacco control measure but also as a way of changing the social meaning of smoking. Rather than setting an age at which smoking becomes acceptable, the policy sends the message that smoking is never a normal or desirable behaviour, helping to further “denormalise” tobacco use across society. The authors suggest that, over time, reducing the visibility and social acceptance of smoking could discourage uptake among future generations, strengthen public health norms, and contribute to lower smoking rates and fewer tobacco-related deaths.

The variation of language concerning tobacco products and tobacco use is known to impact the understanding of related risks and influence behaviors including use uptake and product cessation. Transnational tobacco companies can use such complexities to change the acceptability of tobacco use and influence public understanding of related risks. These changes, in turn, impact tobacco use behaviours. Looking at variations in the language used by different groups can therefore offer helpful insights into tobacco use cultures and make imbalances of information between groups plain. This paper examines the language of tobacco use, specifically smoking, across a sample of health organizations (the National Health Service, the World Health Organization, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention), the tobacco industry (British American Tobacco and Philip Morris International), and in “general English.”