April 13, 2024 - 8:00am
Boris Johnson is fuming. The target of his anger is the Government’s plan to phase in a complete ban on smoking. If it gets through Parliament, it will be illegal to ever sell a cigarette to anyone born after 2008. The idea is to create the first “smoke-free generation”.
As is the case with adults, smoking among 11-15 year olds is in steep decline anyway — and so ministers, prompted by the public health lobby, see their chance to end this habit once and for all.
Not everybody shares that ambition. Speaking at a conservative event in Canada this week, Johnson described the policy as “absolutely nuts”. The “party of Winston Churchill” now wants to ban cigars, he complains. Like Liz Truss, he believes this to be unbecoming of a Tory government.
And yet, of the last three prime ministers, who is really out of touch with public sentiment? For once, it isn’t Rishi Sunak. According to polling from More in Common, 64% of Britons support the phased ban with 22% opposed. Among people who voted Conservative in 2019, the verdict is an even more emphatic 71% versus 20%.
The uncomfortable truth for Johnson and Truss is that British voters love banning things. For instance, this week the WWF is trumpeting an Ipsos survey showing that 86% of Britons favour a prohibition on single-use plastics such as “shopping bags, cutlery, cups and plates”. That’s rather higher than the 73% of Americans who thought the same.
A starker transatlantic contrast was on show during the pandemic. Whereas lockdowns and mask mandates were polarising issues in the US — pitting anxious liberals against defiant conservatives — Deltapoll found that British voters of all persuasions were strongly in favour of the strictest measures, including some, like vaccine passports, that went well beyond the Government position.
Or take civil liberties more generally. According to YouGov, more of us support than oppose policies such as compulsory ID cards, CCTV in all public spaces and a national database of every citizen’s DNA. Significantly, these measures are more popular among Conservative voters than Labourites, and more so among Leavers than Remainers.
So, as it turns out, the silent majority isn’t who you think it is — quite the opposite, in fact. Unlike our professional “conservatives”, the public understands that civilisation is in large part a history of banning things. If it weren’t, we’d still be standing knee-deep in sewage while watching bear-baiting for entertainment.
As poll after poll confirms, there’s an authoritarian tendency in the British electorate that our politicians are unwilling to represent. The fear is that, eventually, someone will scratch that unsatisfied itch — and dig a little too deep.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeI bet that if (and that is a BIG if) the ban comes into place, smoking among children will go up.
In any case, even if it does become law, it will either be forgotten or repealed as utterly unworkable.
Truss is right, it is unbecoming of an alleged Tory government.
I’m off to the Philippines next sat..they don’t give a fk!! But..all this progressive shit is, likea tsunami, headed there at some stage!
I’m in the Philippines now.
I have never seen any country that so thoroughly stamps out smoking.
Never Say No
“Why did the kids put beans in their ears?
No one can hear with beans in their ears.
After a while the reason appears.
They did it cause we said no.”
From the musical The Fantasticks
The headline is too long. It should end after the word “step”.
The circus has moved on and he’s no longer a relevant act.
‘standing knee-deep in sewage while watching bear-baiting’. Now that’s a Saturday night out! Just needs ‘while smoking a cigar’ to cap it.
….or a pipe!
A majority supporting a policy does not make it sensible, workable, or right.
We live in a democracy. If you start believing that you can ignore the majority for the “greater good” then you’re no better than those that spent years trying to overturn the EU referendum.
I think the smoking ban is a stupid idea but ultimately if I’m in the minority I’ll just have to get on with it
Why don’t we have the death penalty then?
We should.
Perhaps. If you asked the people, the majority have wanted the death penalty for many years. They didn’t even support the original ban. So politicians are hardly in the habit of giving the majority what they want are they? Beyond bribing people with their own money, they give the people very little of what they want.
People ALWAYS say,write or tick the “correct” the “acceptable” option in polls. Whether they are speaking on.their phone,being filmed on the street in a vox pop or filling in a questionnaire, no one wants to go on record admitting they don’t care about the homeless,they think they pay enough tax already for the NHS and they think serial killers of whose guilty there is no doubt whatever should be topped. So the politicos can claim.to be carrying out the populaces wishes and this is why Labour won’t win. People fib.
That’s IF we do have this much wished for semi-mythical General Election. It might be worth it for THEM.to.declare Martial Law. There is a war on after all.
You seem to be suggesting government by opinion poll. Which has been shown in recent years to leave all the big issues facing us more or less unaddressed.
Was the public clamouring for a ban? No. So this poll just means the majority who are non-smokers, don’t really care if a measure that doesn’t affect them is introduced.
Remember, there are many instances of a poll showing the public favours A, being followed by a vote for B after an electoral campaign. Brexit being a good example.
There are many things where personal choice, not majority opinion should take precedence.
We’ve had decades of anti-smoking zealotry that has gone way beyond protecting people from ‘passive smoking’ which was always a panic based on scant evidence.
The ban in 2007 effectively killed the Pub and led to the closure of many of the places where communities came together to socialise. The pandemic just hastened the decline of these places.
Individual freedom has been destroyed by this legislation.
And what really makes the ‘phased ban’ so absurd (as Boris no doubt recognised) is that it would mean that in ten years’ time, an individual would have to prove that they were 27 years of age rather than 26 before they purchased cigarettes legally…
The ban absolutely did not kill the pub. That kind of exaggeration does your case no favours. There’s lots of “back-street boozer” type pubs that’ve closed, the main reasons being cheaper supermarket booze, higher local rates and the opening of more welcoming – to all groups – of smaller premises, many of which have taken over empty retail premises and remodelled the pub with greater emphasis on cask ales. They’re thriving, and so is everyone who frequents them in an environment free of stinking cancerous smoke.
I agree with you actually. None of us can really look back nostalgically on smoke filled pubs. But 25 years ago anti-smoking campaigners said they weren’t trying to ban smoking, only secondary smoking – understandable – but a ban is now what’s being proposed.
I miss those pubs. Desperately. And so do many others.
How can you miss pubs? There are 50,000 of them.
Yeah, but not like the “King’s Behind” in Upper Throckmorton.
Same here. I miss the grimy little cut-and-run boozers in the back streets of my city. They also used to open at 5 am for shift workers and were often stowed out by quarter past. First experience of this was working on the Post as a student and delivering mail to a tiny bar full of chain-smoking alkies who asked me for their Giros every day. Now, I love a good ayle as much as the next man, but something was lost when these pubs closed down. And you never had to put up with noisy middle class familes eating lunch either. Crisps and a pie, if you were lucky. Happy days!
Ah, the “Early Opener”, where the drunks had to bang down a spirit first, so their hand became steady enough to hold a pint!
We lost 2 pubs, a Bingo Hall and a Working Men’s Club in our town within months of the 2007 ban. The licencees that I spoke to blamed the legislation.
The people who go to the ‘remodelled’ pubs (guest ales, trendy food, Charlie making his presence known in the toilets, extortionate prices and no atmosphere) are a completely different to the communities that used ‘back street pubs’. But of course those communities don’t matter because they are Brexit-backing, middle-aged deplorables.
As for ‘stinking cancerous smoke’, Sir Richard Doll, the man who proved the causal link between active smoking and lung cancer, said: “The effect of other people smoking in my presence is so small it doesn’t worry me.”
‘Passive smoking’ was just an excuse to bully smokers.
My great-grandfathers, grandfathers, father and my sons greatly enjoyed local ‘back-street boozers’ full of ‘stinking cancerous smoke with no warm watery exorbitant ‘cask ales’ thank you: you really don’t smack of the Lancashire lads I know.
So what? Is stereotyping people meant to validate your point?
Most pubs are now not pubs in the traditional sense, but restaurants. They were killed by the ban on smoking. A lot of people remember with affection and nostalgia to sundays spent drinking with friends in atmospheric smoke-filled bars.
Smokers killed pubs. It’s the reason 80% of the population stopped using them.
The number of pubs is contracting to accommodate the number of people who want to use them. They were a Boomer/Gen X thing. I speak as a pub-going Boomer.
I want to use them. I just can’t afford to use them. Surely your rationale for pub closures is perversely narrow.
Fair ennufski. In that case disregard “want to”.
The panic on second-hand smoking was one of the worst pieces of junk-science-justified policy until the pandemic, which of course made even global warming look scientifically respectable.
People may favour authoritarian measures in the abstract, at least when they are asked loaded questions by opinion pollsters, but they don’t tend to like the consequences of authoritarian measures – low economic growth, higher cost of living, overloaded police ignoring real crimes, petty bureaucracy at every turn. It is the job of government not merely to implement every authoritarian measure which may score highly in focus groups, but to deliver an economy and public services which work and prioritise what is actually important to people.
A significant proportion of the NHS budget – aka, ‘public services’ – has been taken up by the treatments of smokers with all manner of diseases, respiratory, circulatory, oro-pharynx and many involving cancer.
The end of smoking tobacco would result in a drop in demand on NHS resources, thus allowing scope for treatment of other illnesses. If an argument is put forward that the ‘tax take’ from buying tobacco would also end, so be it. I very much doubt the tax take would go anywhere near the costs of treatment.
The argument that smoking costs the NHS money is totally fallacious. If today’s smokers give up tomorrow or even if they never smoked they are highly unlikely to go through the rest of their life without needing NHS treatment (and that’s before you add in pension costs, long term care etc). In fact the incidence of cancer is increasing (at least 50% in someone’s lifetime I believe) so not smoking is no guarantee that you won’t die a painful death from cancer. But it doesn’t need much of a logical leap to realise that if all the people that died of lung cancer decades ago were still alive they would now be getting ill and dying of something else i.e. costing the NHS money.
So the argument against smoking is about life expectancy and a healthy lifestyle. By all means the government should give advice and support to people who want to quit. But to ban it will encourage a black market which already exists, or make people choose something else. As I say in another post here, a lot of us don’t want to live a perfect middle class lifestyle.
I’m afraid that simply incorrect, and the number of votes pattern is no indicator (btw) of accuracy.
I worked in the NHS for 35 years. I have first-hand experience of the costs to the NHS of those whose health had been destroyed by cancer at an earlier age but the treatments for which were far more expensive than the type of end-of-life care that people might expect to receive, but also witnessed the cost in human suffering, not least to the relatives of those whose loved ones died at an earlier age than would otherwise have been the case. The “costs” aren’t just on a balance sheet, although smoking increases the financial burden on the NHS – some costs are undefinable in terms of human values. Whatever dubious “pleasure” people think they derive from smoking just isn’t – and never has been – worth it.
Keep it simple:
the tax take from smokers, plus, the savings in care and pensions from smokers’ reduced life expectancy
minus
NHS treatment for smoking related illnesses
has always been a huge profit for governments: work it out, it’s scary.
If it cost the government money then it would have been banned decades ago
I need receipts. Bring in the studies. And while you’re at it, do the same for liquor and food choice
What you’re saying in bald terms is I’m quite sure true and I bow to your superior knowledge.
But I’m asking you to think about a simple piece of logic. If nobody had ever smoked then people who died 20, 30 or 40 years ago may still be alive i.e. their life expectancy would have been greater. There would therefore now be more older people who now need NHS treatment, other longer term care and or course state pensions. Nobody ever takes these costs into account when the “smoking costs the NHS” argument is made. So if you take all costs into account it simply cannot be the case that “smoking costs the state money”. By ending their lives early smokers have saved non-smokers money. No government should encourage its citizens to shorten their life expectancy but should they discourage it? The argument that smokers were encouraged to smoke by advertising is no longer true because there hasn’t been any advertising for 30 years and people still smoke.
Your point about human suffering is true. But for example my mother smoked one cigarette a day for 40 years which gave her a brief moment of pleasure in a stressful life. She died painfully of ovarian cancer. Non-smokers unfortunately get ill and die and they suffer and their relatives suffer.
Finally, it simply isn’t up to you or the government to decide what my pleasures are as long as they don’t harm anybody else. I know the majority of you will never understand it but I enjoy the taste and smell of Virginia tobacco in a pipe or a roll-up (in moderation of course).
By the way, I enjoy the quality of the comments (including yours) on Unherd and I hope you take my comments as sincerely held and thought through.
If nobody had ever smoked in Britain, then there would be more old people now alive needing NHS treatment, other long term care, state pension, and for some public sector pensions. Its a simple point really. The human suffering argument is true, but non-smokers also get ill, suffer and die.
It’s not up to you or the government to decide what other people’s pleasures should be as long as they don’t harm anyone else. It may be hard for most people to comprehend but I enjoy the taste and smell of Virginia tobacco in a pipe or a roll-up – in moderation of course.
The evidence is that whole life healthcare costs are higher for non-smokers (and people who are a ‘healthy’ weight) compared to smokers and the obese.
This is because they live longer, but develop more expensive age-related conditions (e.g. Dementia). Pieter van Baal and his colleagues demonstrated this more than a decade ago, Arguably the NHS is struggling to keep pace with society’s demands exactly because people are living ‘healthier’ lives.
However, while that should mean that we avoid the fallacious (and damaging) argument that healthier lifestyles will save the NHS money, it’s not really the point.
The pleasure I derive from smoking is as real as any other. And I should have the freedom to enjoy it if I wish.
I don’t fly: but I wouldn’t want to deny others the dubious pleasures of foreign holidays just because they have a negative impact on my health due to the damage air flight causes to the environment.
Nor would I want deny people the dubious pleasures of participation in sport, even though many will suffer injury and longterm health problems such as osteoarthritis.
I don’t even mind if the duty I pay on tobacco funds all those knee operations…
I’m pretty sure it has been shown that smoking does not increase health care costs. People die younger, thereby reducing health costs associated with aging. It also provides a major revenue stream for govt. Regardless, there are plenty of lifestyle choices that increase heath care costs. If we banned driving it would very much reduce health costs. What about people eating at McDonald’s, or being overweight?
As an American, the whole debate just reinforces the downside of throwing everybody into a collective insurance pool. When everybody is part of the same pool, it makes complete sense to regulate your neighbor’s personal behavior.
I understand the need to stigmatize smoking and even to limit indoor smoking because your vice no longer affects just you. But as you note, where does it stop? What’s preventing the slippery slope and in addition; why are hard drugs becoming more acceptable at the same time known agents like alcohol and nicotine are so maligned? At least, people have some sense of the risk. With harder drugs, we don’t even have good population studies yet.
Even Amsterdam is becoming stupid in this regard. You can smoke cannabis joints mixed with tobacco in a (weed) coffeeshop, but cigarettes are banned.
Maybe some political administrations think that having a stoned populace with deranged minds would be quite helpful. As far as I know smoking tobacco does not kill your wits but various other substances do
What your theory ignores is ultimately we will all die, it doesn’t matter if it’s smoking, heart failure, brain failure or whatever.
End of life care is massively expensive whatever the cause, and we will all need it (barring accidents and real sudden death)
Ultimately smokers who pay more tax and die early save the NHS money.
Fataturk ruined Britain in many ways. His comprensive abandonment of the 2019 platform he won a majority on – from doing nothing with the opportunity provided by Brexit, to relentless war on the motorist (LTNs, ULEZ zones that target poor drivers, three abreast cyclists, 20mph zones etc etc etc) to accelleration of the Nut Nut zero madness, to record immigration, record taxes, record spending, and one of the hardest, longest and most economically destructive lockdowns in Europe – is at the root of all the Tory party’s current woes. (In this context, parties at No10 in lockdown are neither here nor there – though the ‘hypocrites’ narrative certainly had resonance).
However he’s right to be skeptical about a creeping smoking ban. Let it die a death naturally. Cigarettes are already too expensive for most, and it’s illegal to smoke in pretty much any public space.
The notion that some arbitrary date gives two people born either side of it different rights, forever, is a nasty idea, as well as a slippery slope. To say nothing of the intrusions required to effectively police it. But given how lost the Tories are politically, we shouldn’t be surprised that banning stuff is the limit of their political ambition. Let’s hope the coming electoral annihilation results in a the emergence of a genuine Conservative party instead of these Lib Dems in disguise.
Well said.
Recently I had the misfortune of having to use one of the worst airports in the world, LHR, and as our bus was meandering thru the spaghetti of roads, I saw the sign advising drivers that they have to pay 5 pounds for the privilege of dropping off someone.
OUCH!! Squeeze’em like a lemon!!! To the last drop!
Maybe the royals could subsidize their subjects a little bit sometimes
I will be handing over £5, plus the actual fare of course, to my taxi driver on Wednesday morning. It’s outrageous.
The age-defined smoking ban is clearly a nonsense. In practice it is intended to create conditions where a near future government will entirely ban cigarettes. Apart from grossly expanding the black market in cigarettes and therefore organised criminality, I suspect its first casualties will be a rise among older people dying from a range of illnesses. I admit I am not an expert, but based on people I have known giving up smoking suddenly is not a good thing, It appears to cause a shock to the system which is far from beneficial.
Well then, the Brits had better brace themselves to enjoy the woke totalitarianism that’s in store for them after Labour comes to power.
Doubt it can be any worse than the serial ineptutide of the Fake Tories.
I suspect that it will.
Already 10% of cigarettes and rolling tobacco sold in the UK is black market, so a ban won’t work – it will deprive the government of tax. Some people may want to live a perfect middle class lifestyle, but a lot of us don’t. Banning vices doesn’t work, it makes people turn to even worse alternatives outside any government control.
Most people vape now anyway so it’s largely irrelevant. Considering how people used to bang on about tab ends littering the place, I wonder how they feel about spent disposable vapes?
Vaping is going to be the next target.
The ban on smoking has been very successful.
Good business opportunities for “alternative business options” ie smugglers and dealers. Like making drug use legal will be. We need more price + business diversity anyway.
….and good thing too. There are any number of people who do things in large part because the government disapproves of them.
This debate is stressing me out so much that I need to go for a fag, then a drink. Then I might have to sniff some glue.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines!
Ironically, my little joke about being so stressed out with the debate that I had to go for a f*g seems to have been censored! Ah it has appeared. Small mercies etc.
People are sick of social engineering
Gosh, it is awfully frightening that the British generally aren’t libertarians, believe in law that protects public health – free the seatbelts, put cocaine back in Coca-Cola – and generally realise that if Boris thinks it’s a good idea, we should do the opposite.
Yes, let’s ban tobacco, but carry on with liquor and in many cases in the west, legal weed. Even worse, there are many jurisdictions that support safe supply of hard drugs for addicts.
Cigarettes on the NHS; the safe supply to wean you off the weed.
The only time I smoked was at school when it was banned. It was a bit of enjoyable socially bonding rule breaking. As soon as I emerged into the real world and could legally smoke it became apparent that it was a fearful waste of money and I stopped. Banning may make smoking suddenly attractive to the young who have already grasped that it is a waste of money. Having to produce proof of age to buy cigarettes will be as effective as the purchase of alcohol by those under age – which is not very.
In any case when did politicians start to take note of the majority desires of the public when deciding laws. Many “reforms” have been adopted despite popular opposition if opinion among the class from whom MPs are drawn is in favour.
I actually stopped when my doctor told me off for various louche lifestyle habits. The dressing down he gave me was so comical and good humoured that I couldn’t refuse. Excellent GP who read me perfectly and picked the right tone.
The smoking ban came in around the same time and, I hate to say it, probably helped me quit. Still wouldn’t stop anyone else though and, as others have noted, a good cigar or pipe can give great pleasure.
Next should be alcohol. Alcohol is a toxic, psychoactive, and dependence-producing substance and has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago – this is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco.
Bottoms Up!
It is fun though, well worth sacrificing a few years at the end for
As the late George Melly put it, I’ll still be drinking in the undertaker’s parlour.
He may be, but this smoking policy cannot work long term. Maybe some fourteen year olds, who might have started smoking, may now refrain. But please don’t tell me a 35 year old will be able to buy cigarettes, but a 34 year will not. Rishi Sunak must appreciate this, even if the general public do not. And, in that sense, this is nothing but a rather silly con.
Ah, we’re back to Lord Devlin, and his 1958 lecture “The Enforcement of Morals.” The was a counterblast to the Wolfenden report, which recommended the legalisation of homosexuality.
It illustrates an unresolvable debate: should the law be used to enforce certain moral standards, if disobeying these standards involves no harm to anyone except the individual concerned? Or, in a free society, should the law content itself with criminalising activity which involves harm to others?
If you take the Devlin position, then ban things to your heart’s content. If you think Wolfenson (and John Stuart Mill) were right, then don’t.
The ideologues of ASH and their allies have always said “We just want this small step and don;t intend more.” They have always lied, and will never be happy until smoking is banned entirely.
Like all such smug puritan do-gooders, they hate the very idea that anyone might choose something enjoyable, even knowing it is bad for them. If they finally get their way they will simply move on to the next crusade against whatever “sin” that takes their fancy.
No, I am not and never have been a smoker. But I recognise the mindset of these “ban whatever we disapprove of” fanatics. They are wrong and they will always be wrong.
There is only one product that is legal if used properly addicts you in weeks, causes ill health to the poor addict and family and may well kill you.
It is also a tax on the unintelligent.
It’s the reason it will eventually be eradicated.
If it’s a tax on low intelligence, how come Bertrand Russell smoked a pipe then?
There will be plenty of people who will say “I am doing this because I know that you smug people disapprove of it”. I once met a heroin user who told me that was largely her motivation for taking her habit up.
The first key point here is Sunak and Bojo somehow focused on this rather than all the things that really matter to folks at this time. The second that UnHerd just acts like a Tabloid newspaper when it does Article on yet another internecine disagreement within the Tories. And with those two elements no wonder we are in a mess on so much else.
“Unlike our professional “conservatives”, the public understands that civilisation is in large part a history of banning things. If it weren’t, we’d still be standing knee-deep in sewage while watching bear-baiting for entertainment.”
What absolute nonsense. Nobody wants to stand knee-deep in sewage and we’d have a technological solution to that irrespective of whether the law prohibited any particualr form of sewage dumping. As for bear-baiting, what put a stop to it in the UK is that there are no bears here, not because it’s banned.
Banning things which can be provided easily outside any law is, quite frankly, stupid.
Cocaine right now can be bought as easily as a takeaway curry if you have a mind to look for it.
That’s so depressing.
The argument has a fallacy: it assumes the current state of things is good, so the bans that led to it were right. And the evidence is faulty: We’re not knee deep in sewage because it was banned, but because humans invented means of moving it further away, and treating it.
Anyway, it’s certainly true that human civilised social history appears to be a long line of one group of people trying to ban the fun of another group. But that doesn’t justify any of those attempts. There were also bans on heliocentrism, women voting and running marathons, Christmas was banned by puritans – as have most religious practice at one stage or another, and of course alcohol.
The true conservative instinct should to understand social history and prevent its excesses – to balance a pluralistic society. What you’re describing is more like a form of jump on the bandwagon populism.
It won’t be long before cannabis and probably a heap of other things are legalised in the UK, and the government wants to ban tobacco? Seriously?
The idea that the government has the right to stop anyone under a certain age from ever smoking, and people agree with it, just shows how far towards totalitarianism we have moved in the last decade.
Firstly, its none of the government’s business what people do to their own bodies. That shouldn’t be a part of their remit. As long as we pay our justified taxes, they should just focus on keeping our streets clean and crime free and our institutions honest and hard working.
Secondly, the use of polls is hardly a scientific process. If I asked 100 people if they think it was acceptable to kill the homeless if it means children could be guaranteed a safe childhood, I’m sure I’d have the support of the majority. Polling is a tool to justify and convince, it isn’t a research method.
Finally, in the words of a great Welsh rock band, if you tolerate this, your children will be next.
Alcohol will be the next target. I’m almost teetotal (though I’m a smoker) and though totally against a ban on alcohol I’d say that the negative effects of alcohol on our working culture is far greater than that of smoking. The effects of smoking don’t really affect most smokers in a meaningful way till ones late fifties at the very earliest. An international study in Holland some years ago divided the subjects into “healthy”, smokers and obese. Over the course of a life time the smokers cost the health service less than the so-called “healthy.”