Smoking ban makes me fume – it’s bad for our health, but it’s our right to do it

It’s not often one wants to side in an argument with big tobacco. We all know they’re the bad guys. But Rishi Sunak has pushed me there.

For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not comfortable being in the company of people tirelessly flogging a cancer-causing product to young people in developing nations. But the trouble is, I also don’t like banning things.

If passed into law, the PM’s proposals would see the smoking age rising by one year every year, potentially phasing out the habit among young people as soon as 2040. Potentially keeping my kids from ever sparking up. Which, given that I love them, is something I really ought to cheer.

But it is that word “ban” and the key question it raises that causes me problems. How closely do we really want the state to be involved policing our behaviour and the bad decisions we choose to make? Isn’t there a discussion to be had, given the sheer number of terrible decisions about harmful substances we make every day?

Take boozing. Taking a drink – any drink – is a bad decision. Recent studies have rather blown up the idea that moderate indulgence can be beneficial, or at least harmless. Here’s the view of the World Health Organisation: “No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health.”

It continues: “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 (drum roll please) tobacco.”

According to a paper published by the Royal College of Physicians, in England and Wales alcohol was also thought to play a part in approximately 1.2m violent incidents – almost half of all violent crimes. But are we proposing to ban booze? Is anyone even making that suggestion? Who would dare?

Shall we turn to sugar? By which I mean harmful free sugars, added during the processing of food.

A comprehensive review in the British Medical Journal found “significant harmful associations between dietary sugar consumption and 18 endocrine/metabolic outcomes, 10 cardiovascular outcomes, seven cancer outcomes, and 10 other outcomes (neuropsychiatric, dental, hepatic, osteal, and allergic)”.

That’s before we get to its role in obesity. “Get serious about obesity or bankrupt the NHS,” Simon Stevens, the former NHS England boss, once said in a speech.

Should we not then ban Mars Bars too?

At this point you could probably accuse me of whataboutery. The cynical tactic of saying “stop, look here and here and here” to divert attention from the fact that cigarettes are horrible products that kill people and drain the NHS of resources.

What I’m actually arguing for is consistency. How should we deal with all these substances that represent bad health choices and could all be filed under the heading “social ills”? Simple: we should tax and regulate them in proportion to their social cost.

I’m no Truss-ite (though on this point our positions may superficially align somewhat). This is not a call for a libertarian free-for-all. Far from it. They might baulk at the idea of hard tax and regulation. I embrace it.

Taxing and regulating tobacco hard has actually worked rather well to date. Official figures show that the rate of cigarette smoking have been in long-term decline over that last decade (and hooray for that). The biggest fall has been amongst the youngest too. Among 18–24-year-olds, 25.7 per cent smoked in 2011, compared with just 11.6 per cent in 2022 (though vaping is a different story).

I support the longstanding ban on smoking in venues where people congregate. Pushing tobacco products under the counter? Fine idea. I also have no problem with the prohibition on smoking in cars, which troubled some civil libertarians. Minors shouldn’t have to suffer the effects of their parents’ poor decision making.

But we ban too many things as it is, and we spend too much time, effort and energy in chasing after those who breach them. We could get into a discussion about the vast resources spent on policing and prosecuting low level drug possession, for example. But that’s maybe one for another day.

There is also a very real question of the hypocrisy at work with the UK banning tobacco. Are we to accept that our young people are to be prohibited from buying the produce of the global giants of the tobacco industry that call London their home? But those same giants are free to sell to young folk in the global south? Doesn’t that make you feel uncomfortable? It does me.

We can have a debate about raising the age limit, given we all do things we regret when we’re young. I’m open to any and all ideas. It’s only the idea of a blanket ban that discomforts me. That, for me, is a step too far.