Sunak wants to phase out legal smoking

[Sasaferrato]

I think smoking should be made mandatory for mps

Too slow.

 

[Brainaddict]

Hmmm, the more I look at the numbers, the more irrelevant this announcement appears. Smoking in young people is in sharp decline anyway. In the UK today, twice as many 18-year-olds vape than smoke.

Yeah, it only really works if they can successfully clamp down on vaping.

 

[Sasaferrato]

I did think that a really obvious step to decrease the ease of access to tobacco without banning it would be to require a licence to sell it as you do with booze. That might change the maths for some shops and would allow councils to say limit the number of shops in an area or impose other restrictions as well as for places selling to kids to have their licence removed.

Shops used to have a licence to sell tobacco.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yeah, it only really works if they can successfully clamp down on vaping.

Yes and no. Depends how bad you think a situation is in which lots of people vape but nobody smokes. It's not ideal - replacing one form of nicotine addiction with another - but it is a big improvement.

Point is that smoking is in sharp decline among young people anyway. This is the announcement of a long-term measure to deal with a problem that is set to improve in the long term anyway.

Meanwhile, Net Zero is quietly ditched...

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Shops used to have a licence to sell tobacco.

Shops make very little money out of tobacco anyway. Their margins are tiny. Gets people in the shop to buy other things, I guess.

 

[Cid]

Yes and no. Depends how bad you think a situation is in which lots of people vape but nobody smokes. It's not ideal - replacing one form of nicotine addiction with another - but it is a big improvement.

Point is that smoking is in sharp decline among young people anyway. This is the announcement of a long-term measure to deal with a problem that is set to improve in the long term anyway.

Meanwhile, Net Zero is quietly ditched...

Sure, but same thing from another POV is that if it's in decline anyway, it's a decent opportunity to give that a bit of a boost and phase it out entirely. Things are never guaranteed to stay on the same track after all, whatever current indicators are.

 

[LDC]

Yes and no. Depends how bad you think a situation is in which lots of people vape but nobody smokes. It's not ideal - replacing one form of nicotine addiction with another - but it is a big improvement.

Point is that smoking is in sharp decline among young people anyway. This is the announcement of a long-term measure to deal with a problem that is set to improve in the long term anyway.

Meanwhile, Net Zero is quietly ditched...

There was actually some interesting research on the news that the knowledge that smoking is unhealthy and causes cancer etc. is actually very low among younger age groups.

I'm also very much in favour of this as a public health measure. It's not ideal and won't be perfect but it will add to the social pressure to make smoking tobacco a thing of the past.

According to ASH it also comes with this as a package of wider measures:

• Legislate to raise the age of sale one year every year from 2027 onwards.
• Double the funding for local authority Stop Smoking Services from next year.
• Increase funding for awareness raising campaigns by £5 million this year and £15 million from next year onwards.
• Increase funding for enforcement on illicit tobacco and e-cigarettes by £30 million from next year.
• Launch a consultation shortly on specific measures to tackle the increase in youth vaping.

 

[Sasaferrato]

Shops make very little money out of tobacco anyway. Their margins are tiny. Gets people in the shop to buy other things, I guess.

The wee shop up from us that used to be run by my friend Qaiser is now run by a lovely Sri Lankan couple.They have really rejuvenated the place, but the biggest change is that they have an alcohol license. People go there for their booze now, rather than the shop further up the hill, and of course buy other stuff as well.

 

[Brayfart]

Presumably by the time that only over 40s are allowed to smoke, sale could be moved to smaller specialist suppliers like cannabis dispensaries in the US, so shop workers wouldn't have to be checking passports.

 

[PR1Berske]

First version of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3703

BBC coverage: MPs to vote on Rishi Sunak's smoking ban bill

GBNEWS and The Telegraph report that up to 50 MPs will rebel against Sunak.

Boris has called it "absolutely nuts".

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Well I can finally feel smug that nothing they do will affect me.

However there seems something very wrong about saying some adults are allowed to do something and others aren't. Will 30 years old ask be asking us to go into the shop for them in a few decades?

 

[lazythursday]

I'd be pretty chuffed if they extended it up to 60 I might finally get off the spliffs.

 

[Serge Forward]

It's performative bollocks.

 

[Serge Forward]

Double post

 

[klang]

Yes but you have to say it three times.

 

[kabbes]

Will 30 years old ask be asking us to go into the shop for them in a few decades?

I think the idea is that the 30 year-olds will not have become hooked as teenagers in the first place. It seems incredibly unlikely that someone who never smoked up to age 30 would then spontaneously choose to start, particularly if this involves having to get older people to buy their fags for them

 

[PursuedByBears]

Sounds ok to me. The fewer people who pick up the habit the better.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

I think the idea is that the 30 year-olds will not have become hooked as teenagers in the first place. It seems incredibly unlikely that someone who never smoked up to age 30 would then spontaneously choose to start, particularly if this involves having to get older people to buy their fags for them

People are getting hooked as teenagers before they are 18, I'm not suggesting they start at 30.

 

[mentalchik]

I'm a bit on the fence but the biggest issue will be policing and appying it.......where i live there are absolutely shit loads of dodgy shops selling vape and black market fags, they don't give a fuck who they are selling it to....they will need huge numbers of trading standards officers to do this.

It will also be a bit of a nightmare for those of us that sell tobacco products to implement

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

I think the idea is that the 30 year-olds will not have become hooked as teenagers in the first place. It seems incredibly unlikely that someone who never smoked up to age 30 would then spontaneously choose to start, particularly if this involves having to get older people to buy their fags for them

That is of course the idea, but...

People are getting hooked as teenagers before they are 18, I'm not suggesting they start at 30.

Most people start around the age of 13, for all my life the age to buy fags was 16, now moved to 18, so clearly the age restriction thing is no bar to younger people starting.

Personally I am in favour of pricing people out of smoking, which is what's happening in Australia, some people will buy those horrible fake fags, but they are not very nice at all, some people will get smuggled stuff in from Belgium or the Canaries, but the majority will just have to move to vapes or stop.

 

[DotCommunist]

where i live there are absolutely shit loads of dodgy shops selling vape and black market fags

I know of three in town within five mins walk of each other, one right on gold street ffs, never get raided.

 

[brogdale]

Sounds like the sort of policy idea that a focus group might have come up with if they'd been asked to create one most likely to divide the Parliamentary tory party

 

[StoneRoad]

Can't happen soon enough for me.
I've had several close friends die from lung cancer / heart problems caused by their tobacco habit.

Just wonder what this will do to the tax incomes at the treasury but it should certainly help the reduce some pressures on the NHS

tbh, imo if tobacco / nicotine were to be discovered today, they would probably be banned as class A substances.

 

[PR1Berske]

Started a thread without seeing this one ("Smoking Ban" )

I'll see if it can be merged.

 

[Silas Loom]

Sounds like the sort of policy idea that a focus group might have come up with if they'd been asked to create one most likely to divide the Parliamentary tory party

It’s weird, isn’t it. This is an excellent move for everybody except the conservative party and the tobacco industry.

Forced to conclude that Sunak is doing this one thing because it is the right thing to do. Which is contrary to all one assumes of the man.

 

[brogdale]

It’s weird, isn’t it. This is an excellent move for everybody except the conservative party and the tobacco industry.

Forced to conclude that Sunak is doing this one thing because it is the right thing to do. Which is contrary to all one assumes of the man.

I'd imagine that there'd be some actuarial analysis showing a 'saving' to the NHS/taxpayer that would have appealed to Sunak

 

[danny la rouge]

First version of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3703

BBC coverage: MPs to vote on Rishi Sunak's smoking ban bill

GBNEWS and The Telegraph report that up to 50 MPs will rebel against Sunak.

Boris has called it "absolutely nuts".

Fucking Generation Alpha snow flakes! It’s all about them, isn’t it? Why don’t the government stop Generation X from smoking? Don’t they care about us?

 

[Silas Loom]

I'd imagine that there'd be some actuarial analysis showing a 'saving' to the NHS/taxpayer that would have appealed to Sunak

Why the scare quotes?

 

[mentalchik]

I know of three in town within five mins walk of each other, one right on gold street ffs, never get raided.

You want to have a walk up the kettering road....every other shop has windows full of vapes....everyone knows where to go to get black market stuff

 

[brogdale]

Why the scare quotes?

I tend to use them whenever I hear governments talking about saving; aside from that there was no implied meaning.