Amid the bonfire of environmental policies that emerged at the Conservative party conference in Manchester earlier this month, one curiously progressive idea stuck out. Prime minister Rishi Sunak would like to country to quit smoking.
Echoing a similar policy in New Zealand, the idea is to gradually raise the age at which you can buy cigarettes, precluding anyone now aged 14 or younger from ever legally purchasing them – even once they have reached adulthood. The thinking is that you can prevent younger generations from buying cigs while accommodating existing older smokers.
Smoking is exceedingly – even comically – bad for you. As the medical profession will tell you, regular smoking will likely kill you through a diverse selection of cancers and heart ailments. Failing that, it’ll at least give you diabetes, make you deaf or blind, and switch off the blood supply to your penis1.
It’s therefore unsurprising that many medical workers favour Sunak’s policy, according to the government’s chief medical adviser Chris Whitty. Doctors may historically have been big puffers, but the advantage is now firmly with anti-smoking campaigners.
Not that they necessarily need to ban smoking to ensure people stop. The habit has been in long-term decline for years, brought on by generational shifts in attitudes to smoking, propaganda that would make North Korea blush, and comprehensive restrictions on how tobacco is sold and advertised. Big Tobacco is now so cowed it writes corporate paeans to the snuffing out of their core business.
What practical arguments stand against a smoking ban are quixotic. One is that it possibly won’t save the taxpayer money. A Full Fact article from 2015 gives an indication of how tricky it is to tot up the potential costs of a given smoker quitting, which includes more healthcare and other government spending, offset against increased economic activity. It may be cheaper for smokers to die younger than to live into a ripe and medically-costly old age.
It’s also a given that more of the tobacco trade will become illicit (and therefore untaxed) as more adults are banned from buying it. Keen observers will note that prohibition for other drugs has not had universally-positive crime-related outcomes. Again, it’s a little hard to weigh this against the obvious health gains to non-smokers, but it’s there.
The smoking lobby is therefore left with the liberal case that consenting adults should have a right to slowly poison themselves – a position I still basically hold (perhaps with some caveats for the hardest drugs). The argument is compelling, but I suspect I’m not alone in lacking enthusiasm to defend people’s right to smoke.
Despite liberalising attitudes to drugs, the mood music is setting a different tune. Labour has been trailing a Kiwi-style smoking ban since the start of this year, and both major parties are committed to cutting junk food consumption, even if the Conservatives have been flakey when it comes to implementing retail restrictions.
There is also the considerable PR problem that is the reputation of Big Tobacco, an industry that for decades was happy to kill its customers and cover it up.
Contrary to some anti-smoking types, I accept that many people do enjoy smoking for its own sake, and not merely to sate an addiction. Morning coffees and post-coital bliss will no doubt be poorer for the smoking ban.
But I must confess, I don’t really care. While in principle I think you should be allowed to smoke, in practice I’m resigned to it fizzling out. I look forward to the smug emails from smokers when alcoholic beer gets the same treatment in 20 years’ time.
Lady reproduction is also hampered, Big Tobacco being all about inclusion.