What would cigar-loving Churchill make of the smoking ban?
Britain once fought for democracy with a cigar in hand, now we’re taking away citizens’ freedom to smoke. It’s enough to make you want to light up, says James Price
If you’re reading this on your morning commute, you may have walked past an advert for Ed Gamble’s new show Hot Diggity Dog. You may wonder why, given the show’s title, the poster depicts the comedian eating a cucumber with ketchup and mustard. The reason is that TfL bans advertising of foods high in sugar and salt on its estate – though promoting crudites with condiments is, apparently, fine.
Yet this is not even the most ludicrous example of official overreach in the name of public health. Last night, MPs voted on the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which will ban anyone born after 2008 from ever legally buying cigarettes, creating a bizarre two-tier system.
As former Chancellor Ken Clarke, pointed out recently: “You will get to a stage where if you are 42, you will be able to buy them, but someone aged 41 will not. Does that mean you will have to produce your birth certificate?”. We may laugh about this now, but there’s nothing funny about infantilising a generation of British citizens and inviting a black market into our country.
By now, everyone knows that smoking is bad for you. We have gone from broad ignorance of risks to our health, to a world where my watch will tell me that my singing in the car risks damaging my hearing.
So, the idea that people aren’t aware of the risks of smoking is obviously ludicrous. Thanks to the wonders of capitalism, we now have a profusion of safer alternatives to smoking, like vapes and heated tobacco. Even snuff has helped friends of mine kick their addiction to fags (though that might say more about about the kinds of people with whom I associate).
And yet the Government has still decided that it knows best, and will ban all those products for everyone, as well. Banning things is a national pastime now, of course, although it doesn’t seem to have prevented the use of many of the other supposedly illegal substances, which are all still shockingly prevalent if the smell around Sadiq Khan’s London is anything to go by. All this bill will do is push the sale of cigarettes underground where, like marijuana, it will be unregulated and in the hands of organised criminals.
A big part of the Government’s argument for banning these products is that children are getting their hands on them. Given that these things are already illegal for children, one wonders whether this is merely the Government channelling its inner Helen Lovejoy, the busybody wife of the vicar in the Simpsons, wailing ‘won’t somebody think of the children!’ to try to shut down the argument.
But the biggest problem with this policy is that it further entrenches the anti-personal liberty instinct that has become prevalent in this country. The land of Winston Churchill puffing on a cigar and defending democracy now seeks to take away ever more of your freedoms.
Readers should remember this every time they read about an MP sharing compromising images of themselves with online strangers or watching porn in parliament then claiming they were researching tractors. These people think they know better than you how to live your life. It’s enough to make you want to pop outside for a smoke.
James Price is director of government relations at the Adam Smith Institute