Just because Liz Truss and Boris Johnson – both opposed to the government’s proposed new smoking ban – hold a belief does not make it wrong. Smoking is unpleasant, but in this week’s parliamentary debate, the word nicotine could have been replaced by cannabis, alcohol, ultra-processed foods, base jumping or mobile phones for children. All have their dangers. But in each case those in favour of restrictions rely on the same argument; if something produces a burden on the state it should be banned. Personal liberty can go hang.
Rishi Sunak’s anti-smoking bill carried the same smudgy fingerprints as his bill on Rwanda. It suggested a late-night Downing Street cabal desperate for somethingeye-catching to inject into the election campaign. It does not ban anyone from smoking, despite appearances. It bans shops from selling cigarettes to an ever-expanding age cohort, currently anyone under 18, with the legal cutoff increasing by one year each year. People born in or after 2009, in other words, will never be able to legally buy a cigarette in Britain. The bill’s target is shopkeepers, charged with juggling the ID cards of hordes of adult purchasers and presumably proxy buyers. The smugglers must be cheering.
So far Britain’s efforts to curb smoking – built on the nudge principle – have been remarkably effective. This has been achieved, as many economists would advise, by working on demand rather than supply. Cigarette use has fallen over the past half-century from about 45% of the population in 1974 to about 12% today and it continues to fall. The method has been to stop smoking indoors, in public enclosed spaces and around children. Advertising has been banned, vending machines abolished and children cannot buy cigarettes. The introduction of vaping, though controversial when it’s young people doing it, is understood to have helped accelerate the fall in smoking, as per the drug policy charity Transform. That vaping can reduce smoking is backed up by data from Australia, where vapes were effectively banned in 2021 and the result has been no cut in smoking – indeed, there’s been a small rise.
For all that, more than 6 million Britons still smoke, their burden on the NHS relieved only by their paying £10bn in tobacco taxes and dying – on average – younger. Despite the comfort smoking has long brought to many people – not everyone is a nicotine addict – there must be a public interest in discouraging its consumption. In its lengthy study of this debate, Transform comes down firmly in favour of simply extending what has worked. When in 2007 Britain raised the age from 16 to 18 it led to an estimated 30% fall in smoking by that age group, a remarkable achievement. In the US, raising the age to 21 in 2019 led to an even greater fall of 39%. A similar raise to 21 is surely what the British government should now do. Unlike Sunak’s staggered ban, which may take five years to take effect, this change could be introduced at once. The only other country to propose his “ID-card ban” has been New Zealand. Its unpopularity and a change of government have seen it abandoned.
We also see the heavy hand of the state in Britain’s failed drugs policies. The global “war on drugs” has been an unmitigated disaster, built as it was on the thesis that demand would end if supply was stamped out. The only regime to prove remotely effective in curbing supply is the Taliban in Afghanistan – and that may not last. Politicians everywhere have preferred to see gangsters triumph, crime soar, jails become crammed and their children ruined, rather than show the guts to decriminalise, regulate and control the hugely lucrative and dynamic drugs industry.
Governments across Europe – most recently in Germany – are testing how to handle recreational and other sorts of drug. They are experimenting with licensing, taxation, product regulation, publicity and public education. Some approaches work, some do not. The British government has adopted a workable policy on the smoking of tobacco by young people. Its record on nicotine control is widely regarded as a success – as its record on other narcotics is a raging failure. As Transform points out, “Tobacco control … is one key aspect of drug policy where the UK has not been shockingly poor by global standards.” The reason appears to be that it has treated “smoking as a public health challenge, led by health agencies, rather than an enforcement challenge led by the Home Office”. Sunak’s smoking ban would have the same defects as the cannabis ban. Complicated government is always bad government.
Tobacco control offers an intriguing testing ground for what is now the fast-liberalising market for drugs across Europe. Realistic and fair regulation will be hard but it must come in if millions are not to die prematurely. The misuse of opioids is now approaching pandemic status across the US.
At every turn, the state is inviting itself to delve ever deeper into the lives and ethics of its citizens – accusations that are constantly thrown at authoritarian governments. It seeks to relieve us of responsibility for personal decisions and deny us freedom of choice. It rules on the food we eat and the drinks we drink, on the right to criticise and on how we discipline or indulge our children. Britain does not need gimmicks such as cigarette passports. Tobacco is a menace but one that’s on the way out. Other addictions should now claim our attention.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
