UK lifelong smoking ban for all born after 2008?
ChastMastr
Shipmate
I just saw this article and am frankly horrified, in terms of all future adults being banned from all tobacco products (which presumably includes pipes and cigars).
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn08jy6w0l5o
Thoughts?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn08jy6w0l5o
Smoking ban for people born after 2008 in the UK agreed
Children aged 17 or younger will face a lifelong ban on buying cigarettes, as the Tobacco and Vapes Bill clears Parliament.
Both the Commons and Lords have settled on a final draft of the "landmark" legislation that aims to stop anyone born after 1 January 2009 from taking up smoking by making it illegal for shops to sell them tobacco, to create a smoke-free generation.
Thoughts?
Comments
Because of adults being treated like children, among other things, but that one stands out.
I assume shops will request ID like they do for alcohol.
Again, this is about adults who should be allowed to make their own decisions. However well-meaning the intent, I believe this is wrong.
That said, I think this may be too late, as kids don’t smoke nowadays, they vape, and I think more needs to be done to make vaping less attractive to children.
I hope the legislation gets through. It’s stopping purchases by the young while leaving the older to continue hurting themselves if they can’t stop. And it doesn’t apply to home consumption IIRC.
Doesn’t strike me as too much nannying.
I fully support a ban as cigarette smoke is one of the few substances that irritates my asthma. Also my late mother died of lung cancer. She had actually given up smoking, but not soon enough.
I wondered about that, but it's not a precedent I'd like to set.
Then they could make the legal smoking age 21. Or 25, etc.
@Barnabas62 said
But also when they’re no longer young. They’re still not allowed to buy tobacco products for the rest of their lives.
I have no problem at all with underage people not being allowed to buy tobacco. It’s the idea that when they grow up, those adults and later adults cannot, ever.
I think that’s a startling amount of nannying for, again, adults.
I’m totally happy about no smoking in all kinds of places. But not allowing adults to buy it at all? To smoke in their own homes, or relevant gathering places?
Tobacco is a pleasure—not one I’m personally into—enjoyed in Europe for five hundred years. That’s not anywhere near as long as alcohol, of course, but still, five hundred years is a pretty long time. I think that matters. People enjoy fine tobaccos in pipes, in cigars, etc. the way others enjoy fine wines. It’s not all cheap cigarettes bought in bulk.
Again, this is about telling adults what to do, in the privacy of their own homes, not children. I’m sorry, but I think this is wrong, and I hope it either does not get made into law, or gets struck down.
Agreed.
Why is it OK for children being allowed to smoke passively, but not actively?
It isn't. But I think legislating for that might be, at least politically, a step too far. At least this is a step in the right direction. YMMV.
So don’t allow smoking around children.
So if a shopkeeper sells a pack of cigarettes to Bob, the shopkeeper can be arrested.
But if Bob takes the pack home and smokes the cigarettes around his kids, thus poisoning them, he's legally home free.
Seems rather arbitrary, where we draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable restrictions on freedom in pursuit of a healthy society. I guess giving people the poison is evil enough to warrant arrest and punishment, but actually poisoning children with the substance gets a pass, because...sanctity of the home?
So health care visitors would give advice and at least try to get them to smoke away from the children - but punitive action against the parents would be difficult to justify. The threshholds for child protection actions are high, in part because of the human rights to privacy and a family life.
We allow parents to take risks with their children, and allow their children to take risks, all the time. (Though we prefer there to be a long term benefit.)
It is the state's job to protect people from other people. It is not the state's job to protect people from themselves.
By the way, I do not smoke and have not done since 1969.
I have seen the destruction smoking causes at both personal and professional levels and am pro the ban.
Motorcycle helmets, seatbelts, the prohibition of the sale of heroin and crack, all are primarily protecting people from themselves.
The sad irony of it was that she never smoked a day in her life but she lived with two smokers, neither of whom suffered anything similar.
I personally would like to see all forms of smoking go the way of the dodo. When it comes to cannabis, God gave me a digestive tract not a chimney.
But I believe adults should be trusted to choose their preferred method of self extinction because if you take away the slowest one they are bound to turn to something more brutal and efficient.
AFF
Smoking is so addictive. The more regulation the better imo.
I tried my first cigarette aged eight and became a regular smoker aged fifteen. I gave up aged twenty eight when I found I was expecting my first child.
It took this major incentive or I would never have given up. The thought of poor health in the future doesn't beat such strong addiction.
There are many things we are not at liberty to do, and this should be one of them.
We kids were exposed to second-hand smoke until we were 18 years old and were able to leave. Two of my siblings took up smoking in high school; both eventually quit. My other sibling and I are “never smokers”.
Adults are free to do what they want, but it’s a real shame when what they want to do has a documented negative effect on other family members’ health and overall home environment. I’m not saying that growing up with adult chain smokers was a case for Child Protective Services, but it was a really depressing and unhealthy environment to live in for 18 years.
That said, my wife and I were very surprised—though thinking about it, we probably shouldn’t have been—when we were in Germany recently and saw how prevalent smoking in public places is there. Smoking in most public places, including places where food is served, has been prohibited where we live since the 1990s. (And we live in a state built on tobacco.)
That's not true. We are at liberty to do just about anything harmful that is within our power to physically and materially do, just most of us don't, or don't even think about it. But if we are that determined to do it, no matter the injunction against it, we will find a way.
We are also expected to suffer the consequences of harmful behaviours towards ourselves and others.
This is why I am with you on the second half of your post regarding assault. I regard the behaviour of my grandfather towards my grandmother, by his smoking, as abuse and ultimately, murder.
I agree 100% with how you feel about people smoking where I am breathing the atmosphere they have polluted. Just because you have elected to extinguish your life in this manner does not give you the right to do me equal or greater harm in the process (the effects of second hand smoke being well documented).
I'm actually kind of appalled at how backwards the "socially progressive" Europeans are on this topic. They smoke like chimneys over here and though there's talk of banning smoking from terraces (already banned indoors in restaurants and on many beaches) here in Spain it hasn't gotten past the talking phase. It truly ranks with the most antisocial behaviour in society.
AFF
That's not true, direct costs are around £21bn annually vs £8bn in lost revenue:
https://fullfact.org/health/farage-smoking-revenue-nhs/
Possibly, but what is being banned is a particular substance and method of consumption (combustion) that is already not particularly popular among younger people (the number of 16-24 yos who smoke as opposed to vaping is in the low single digit percentages)
Using vapes that contain nicotine will be allowed - though this legislation, unlikely the previous one proposed by the last government - will put restrictions on advertising and flavouring of vapes.
There'll be a black market, but laws are capable of being enforced, especially on an island. Given how quietly destructive cigarettes are - my grandpa died of emphysema - I can't complain.
I'm glad to no longer have to endure clouds of smoke in places like train carriages and pubs. I admit that I get annoyed when encountering someone smoking in a park or walking in the woods.
Do I support the proposed ban? On the whole, yes. But I would like to see more being done to stop teens vaping.
I'm well acquainted with the French and their fondness for the cafe and cigarettes. I lived there in the 80s and a common pickup line on the street was to ask a pretty girl for a light. One time I said "Desole. Je ne fume pas" The boy replied "A ton age?" I couldn't figure out if he meant I was too young to have quit already or too old not to have started.
I don't doubt it's easy to get smoking off the terraces. But this is Spain. I have become accustomed to the glacial pace of everything here.
AFF
I think it's more that we're so used to tobacco being readily available, even if smoking isn't as socially acceptable as it used to be. As @Doublethink points out, we're not horrified that adults can't legally buy meth (or coke, crack, fentanyl, heroin, etc etc). I used to know someone who had quit crack, drinking and smoking, and he said smoking was by far the hardest of the three to quit. 12 years on he still wanted a cigarette.
In which case a total ban on sales sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
And if that’s the case, the ban on selling cigarettes sounds like it’s aimed at the wrong problem. The easy problem, perhaps, but the wrong one.
Well, all indications are that smoking causes much more serious long term health problems than vaping does, so it's a real problem that's not necessarily been that easy to address.
And if smoking is in the low single digit percentages among young people, then it seems an argument could be made that there has been some success in addressing the problem.
I am baffled by the horrified reaction to a bill seeking fewer deaths due to lung cancer, and fewer illnesses caused by passive smoking. Smoking is a selfish habit that only does harm. I don't want to protect harmful and anti-social behaviour.
Isn't it the case that smokers cost society money in treating smoking related illnesses, but also, by dying younger, reduce the cost to society of old age pensions?
If tobacco was discovered today would it be legal?
Sir Humphrey Appleby certainly made an argument along those lines (also connected to taxation on tobacco) back in about 1982.
I would expect a legal arms race similar to the one that we've already had over the centuries.
A drug that's relatively easy to home brew and bootleg is going to be very expensive to prohibit. Moonshine, y'all. It's a thing.
And now I'm suddenly very interested in the logistics of tobacco manufacture and distribution.
Content warning for banjo music with lyrics about substance abuse.