This is a strange experience, what online philosophers call cognitive dissonance. Rishi Sunak and the Conservative government have done something positive for public health. Selling tobacco products to anyone born after Jan 1st2009 has taken a first giant step towards becoming illegal. This will be good for the heath of children and young people and will significantly reduce the toll from tobacco as time goes by.
Good Law
On Monday the 15th May 2024, MPs voted overwhelmingly in favour of making it illegal to sell tobacco in smoked or vaped forms to anyone who turns 15 in 2009 and forever thereafter, meaning that they and future generations will never be able, (legally at least) become smokers or vapers. Disposable vapes will soon no longer be available at all. Good riddance.
Government has at last resisted the ever powerful, murderous tobacco lobby, and the act, once it flies though committee stage and the House of Lords should become law before the next election and will be supported by the next government whatever its complexion.
Shenanigans
The politics are curious. 57 Tories and 9 independent MPs voted against the bill and 104 Tories and 39 Labour MPs didn’t vote. The Labour Party were supporting the bill, so if we assume their 39 MPs who didn’t vote were paired offagainst 39 Tories who were also not available, then 65 Tories effectively decided not to support the bill; in other words 179 Tories voted for the bill and 112 did not support it. My interpretation of this is that it shows that a significant number of Tories are still swayed by the Tobacco lobby and to their shame, did not want the bill to pass.
Stopping starting?
I can’t help but reflect. I started smoking 53 years ago when I was 15. On the farms I laboured on smoking was the rule and non-smokers had to explain themselves. Like many youngsters I sought approval and wanted to be one of the gang, I accepted advice that once I got over the horrible effects of nicotine on the uninitiated, I could become a real smoker – grown up and cool just like everyone else. So, I did. In those days, just to help me get started, tobacconists were happy to sell kids of any age cigarettes one at a time.
The tobacco generation
Indeed, in those days tobacco smoke was ubiquitous. I was just one of the tobacco generation. My own habit really took off during a spell as a patient in a 1970 orthopaedic ward where the air was grey blue with the exhaled smoke from slowly healing young patients as well as staff. So off I went to pollute my mind and body till I finally quit in my 40’s.
Perhaps if it was illegal, I would still have been unable to resist the culture – plenty of older friends would have been happy to become informal dealers – but the message is clear to those selling to youngsters, flout this law and your profits will vaporise or go up in smoke! I’m delighted that vaping shops will have taken one step to insolvency.
In a sane world, vaping would have been an aid to addiction treatment only and not as a highly profitable novel addiction and another successful big Tobacco strategy to continue to make money out of misery as well as the ugly waste it generates with disposable vapes. More regulation was needed to reduce the increasing damage to health vaping is now doing to a whole new generation of addicts, so the act has been widely welcomed.
Problems
There are problems of course, policing the law will be problematical, particularly for local authorities going bust left right and centre, and it might seem unfair to a 15 year old wannabe smoker that they cannot legally do what a 18 year old can. There will still be plenty of underage smokers, but hopefully the tobacconists and vaping shops will see their trade decline and die, people will have a bit more cash to spend elsewhere and be less dependent of a multifaceted industry that would not give a hoot whether they live or die.
What about the Black-Market argument?
Sure, there will be those who will quietly sell anything to anyone, vapes and tobacco included, and there is the ultimate problem of good laws compromised by bad enforcement. The law will however, give parents, schools and those who see vaping for what it is a tool to use against those who sell illegally and hopefully add to the anti-smoking culture which has grown over my time. Smoking or vaping is not cool, it is sad.
The Freedom Myth
Ant then the inevitable “Libertarian” dissenters. These were led by the increasingly nutty Liz Truss and the Conservative Icon, Boris Johnson who so singularly demonstrated his lack of understanding of health issues during the pandemic. 57 Conservative MPs, some paid by the tobacco lobby claimed people should be free to decide for themselves if they want to become addicted to tobacco. Yes, division will be created between people one day older than others. Like so much libertarian dribble. these arguments are hogwash.
Freedom in the puerile libertarian sense, comes with no responsibility to society, your family, to others, or even your future self, yet tobacco has big impacts on all. Indeed, smoking will not be a criminal offence, but selling it in these dreadful vaping shops or ant retail outlet designed to make vaping look cool, will.
In New Zealand similar moves against tobacco have been scrapped by their new right leaning government. Despite popular support, they want to use the revenue from tobacco taxes to fund tax cuts, which means they are happy to damage people’s health for their political views. Forecasting there had predicted:
“The combined package of strategies (plus media promotion) reduced adult smoking prevalence from 31.8% in 2022 to 7.3% in 2025 for Māori, and 11.8% to 2.7% for non-Māori. The 5% smoking prevalence target was forecast to be achieved in 2026 and 2027 for Māori males and females, respectively”
These predictions suggest the law would improve health, save lives, and reduce social inequality. Clearly too much for right wing populists.
Vaping is not a safe option
Vaping as been sold as a better option than smoking which of course it technically correct, however it is also a gateway to smoking, creates addiction, costs a fortune, damages lungs and causes long term inflammation. Ideally, as a step out of smoking it has a place, but most smokers quit without it.
There are already definite impact on health and the industry is badly regulated with vapes containing a huge range of poorly define toxins. What would be awful is a repeat of that way too long road to the recognition of tobacco related misery. Breathing in a cocktail of noxious chemicals has health impacts – this time, let’s not wait for them to become the norm in our clinics and hospitals.
Smoking – a dying habit
The law is much needed as the long slow reductions in mass poisoning due to tobacco had recently stalled and the less dangerous, but still health damaging vaping has increased phenomenally, particularly in the 7.6% of youngsters who vape.
Like all good laws, the act will need careful crafting to avoid loopholes and inevitable industry lobbying but will lead to far more good than harm. In 50 years’ time there will be a far larger tranche of 65 year olds thanking heavens they never started down the long road of smoking or vaping with all its attendant misery, expense, psychological dependence, physical suffering and premature death.
As I coughed and wheezed my way thought a recent mild Sars-Cov-2 infection, I was reminded of my own smoking addiction. I will be delighted that there will be a generation, including my grandson, for whom consuming tobacco will be one of those weird things people used to do.
It will be described as a sort of mass delusion fuelled by those, like those minority Conservative MP’s and populists in New Zealand who pandered to an industry designed to kill.
Colin, I remember commuting in Manchester in the 1970s. On the local trains it was normal to have a single non-smoker compartment and 5 smoking compartments. I always aimed to get into the non-smoker, but sometimes failed and just being in a smoking compartment made me cough.