So currently, taxes on tobacco products bring in +£10B in revenue. The arguement for banning smoking is the cost of treating smoking related illnesses on NHS, but what this bill fails to factor in is that this ban will see £10B less in the chancellory kitty but people will still be able to buy cigarettes abroad and bring them in, so the NHS will still need that funding for treating smoking related illnesses. Or do they plan on banning passangers bringing in cigarettes through customs?
To do that will then require checking every bag at all airports/seaports which will cause huge delays for everyone going through customs, are you all prepared to accept that?
Ban smoking, then what is next? Banning alcohol? Sugar? Salt? All of these have massive influence on peoples health, so what are you going to do when the government decides to ban these? What else will they try to ban?
I think it is a question of scale. The bill is aimed at preventing future generations from starting, so if anywhere near successful, it should see over time a fall in the number of smokers and with it a fall in the costs to the NHS related to smoking.
But what it fails to factor in is the ease and low cost of buying cigarettes in Europe and the loss of tax revenue if the selling of tobacco is banned in the UK, but people are able to just jump a flight/ferry to Europe and stock up before returning to the UK.
My first reaction to the VERY REAL problem of housebound parents being unable to acquire cigarettes through their children is
Partridge shrug
More seriously, if the tobacco industry is actively prevented from recruiting new smokers for thirty years, then that industry simply won’t exist. Nobody is buying Johnny’s parents their cigarettes. Any last addicted stragglers by that point will be on medically prescribed nicotine substitutes, much like Heroin addicts are prescribed Methodone.
Then doubling down with a pathetic attempt at humour.
You knew the point I was making, but to spell it out again for you, imagine a 40 year old not being allowed to legally BUY cigarettes.
Pretty embarrassing from you, defending a ridiculous Tory motion to pont score on a football forum.
Dont bother replying
And the young assistant saying, “Ah, little Johnny, statistically speaking your mother will have already died due to cancer, cardiovascular disease or related nicotine related mortality. Away with you and your hypothetical situation. By the way, would you like a spliff? These are legal now…”
I remember hearing Sir Richard Doll on Desert Island Discs years ago. I found him fascinating but one thing that stuck with me was that he said that anti-smoking campaigns tended to fail because they were aimed at children. He suggested that aiming campaigns at young adults would be more effective because those were the groups that children aspired to, not some middle aged docker hacking their lungs out at the back of the pub.
Generally speaking, people start smoking before the age of 20. If they haven’t smoked by 25 then it is highly unlikely that they will start. Personally, I think cigarette smoking is likely to go the same way as snuff. I mean, when is the last time you saw anyone snorting that stuff?
I do get all that, and to be clear I’m 100% in favour of stopping people from smoking.
As an ex smoker, I now find it offensive to be near a smoking cigarette.
But as much as your point was tongue in cheek, I doubt that statistically speaking people in their early 60’s will have all died from smoking.
It’s the ridiculous way of enforcing the law I’m talking about, not the end goal.
In the world of pixies and fairy dust there will be no cigarettes available in 2050, anyone who thinks that any government is going to happily lose the billions in duty they get from tobacco products is a bit deluded.
All this is doing is forcing it underground where black market tobacco in the future will be like weed is now.
What next, a ban on anyone over 15 stone being allowed in McDonalds, or to buy a case of full fat Coke in Tescos?
No, it most likely has considered it but thought it a relatively low risk. After all People already do buy when abroad and have done for decades - but your unlikely to pop over to France for example to buy a pack of cigs every time you run out just because your local shop is no longer legally allowed to sell you them.
This legislation as far as i am aware is aimed at the generations who have not yet legally started smoking, so are presumably less minded to buying from abroard.
Firstly, I believe the smoking ban has General cross party support?
I’m 46 and it’s not hard to imagine not being able to legally buy cigarettes, because I’m already not allowed to buy Heroin or Cocaine.
It will be a bit weird to have a situation where the age increases, but the point of this is to stop a new generation becoming addicted to nicotine. This is a profoundly good thing.
I fully expect that by 2050 cigarettes will not be on sale full stop, as the industry will have been killed off.
Why not, it happily gave up much more through brexit?
The health service spends more in treating the effects of smoking than what the government recieves in duties so will view it as a financially positive move.
You could make the same argument about any narcotic. Imagine the revenue the government could earn legalising and taxing cannabis - and yet they don’t do it.
Let’s be honest. A progressively increasingly age ban is palatable to a Government precisely because the gradual phasing out isn’t going to hit revenues in their electoral cycle. Rishi Sunak has no intention of being the Prime Minister in a decade, even if by some miracle he wins the election.
As I’ve said, I’m all for stopping young people subjecting themselves to the health risks from smoking.
But, this law isn’t going to stop it happening.
From the beginning of modern time, young people who have wanted to get their mitts on cigarettes or alcohol have always found a way of doing it, and will continue to do so.
To make my hypothetical scenario less extreme, todays 16 year old, who’s already hooked on nicotine, can’t legally buy a packet of fags when he’s 26?
If any of our politicians were remotely serious about wanting to eradicate tobacco related disease, they simply ban it over say the next 3 years.
But they wont, any more than they would for alcohol, fast foods or high sugar content products.
Yeah, and this law makes that much more difficult. That a law can’t be 100% perfect doesn’t mean you don’t bother.
When I was at school, I remember the corner shop opposite school sold single fags from a jar in the window, next to the Bonbons and cola bottles. There was no enforcement and the shopkeeper would happily sell to kids of any age.
There have been many acts of Parliament designed to stop people smoking. I remember the advertising ban long ago. We’ve had packaging controlled, displays removed, graphic images on packets. Bans on smoking in public. We’ve had the age limit increased from 16 to 18.
Of course some kids will still find ways to smoke. But all those acts have had an impact, and so will this. When I was a kid it seemed like everyone smoked. Now it’s around 1 in 10