The Commons is being offered a free vote on the introduction of a smoking ban. Over many years the ban would gradually extend from young people to older people.
I have received little feedback on this topic. I am interested to hear from constituents who have strong views either way on this proposal. I would like to take into account constituency opinion before voting.
April 13, 2024
Whilst I do not smoke ( stopped 51 years ago) and know that it is harmful and costs the U.K/NHS a great deal in treatments I am not sure that the government should/could ban it if people want to do it .
The habit has been discouraged enormously and the numbers smoking have fallen drastically and continue to fall
This proposed law is unenforceable and this makes it ( additionally ) a bad law
You should vote it down
April 13, 2024
Smoking kills smokers prematurely and cost taxpayers who have to fund the NHS.
April 13, 2024
I believe that vaping is actually the challenge for younger people, not smoking.
It makes sense to conduct a gradual ban but I believe there must be a plan to also ban vaping in the same leglisation. Not only does vaping cause an insane amount of plastic waste, the unknown side effects of vaping have also not been discovered yet. This is reminiscent of early years of smoking, with “doctor recommended” brands. We should learn from history here.
April 13, 2024
I was a teenager with an addictive personality when I started smoking. Not many of my friends did, but it quickly got hold of me. Where I lived (in Africa) it was cheaper to smoke than to eat, and it helped relieve certain domestic tensions I was enduring. It was not difficult to obtain cigarettes, and I smoked very heavily for a good ten years, despite blandishments and bribes from my mother. I would give up, with great difficulty, during Lent as a discipline but on the lenient intermediate Sundays would chainsmoke. Had it been illegal I would never have taken it up, and it is likely that I would not now have asthma and emphysema. A ban would certainly have helped me enormously. (I never took drugs with my college chums for the very reason that they were illegal.)
April 13, 2024
With all the things wrong with this country this is virtue signalling of the highest order. Apart from the fact it’s unenforceable it’s downright stupid.
It ranks among the great tory achievement of legalising gay marriage. No doubt liebour will help it through parliament.
April 13, 2024
Sir John, ask yourself this simple question. Is someone’s personal choice of habit anything to do with Parliament?
If you support the ban on smoking, it will not be long before the ban on drinking is tabled for consideration.
Let adults enjoy their rights to be adult, it does not require any wasted time in Parliament on something that is all but absent from society anyway.
April 13, 2024
I don’t smoke. But I don’t think there should be a ban on smoking.
Or alcohol. Or sugar. Or coal. If you ban smoking only the criminals will smoke. The black market will get a boost as the only part of the economy not under government control.
Just let people life their lives, rather than nannying them over every little thing.
I would support banning MPs from standing in elections without having any real world experience of business, life or evidence of living on a budget.
April 13, 2024
When/where has prohibition worked before?
Nannying over a smoking ban, whilst not effectively prioritising the control of population increases, which has impacted infrastructure/services/housing & NHS. Also ignoring worrisome debt spiralling, frankly it’s just Rishi virtue signalling, before he heads back to America, land of the free… 🙂
April 13, 2024
I know I’m not a constituent but since I don’t appear to have an MP any more, certainly not one who consults and listens….
The whole smoking thing is nothing short of medical fascism and it sets a really bad precedent.
There are people who get really bad diseases and have never touched a cigarette!
“We will not treat you if we judge that you caused your illness”
So what’s next?
Sugar?
Beef?
Driving??
Crossing the road?
Breathing?
April 13, 2024
*bad diseases ..including those attributed to smoking!
April 13, 2024
+1
April 16, 2024
My GP has just recommended I eat oodles more red meat to increase my iron levels. Excellent.
April 13, 2024
Naturally the process should begin with banning all smoking in and around the Palace of Westminster and Portcullis House. That would show a good example to the rest of the country.
PS. I don’t smoke.
April 13, 2024
Distraction, where was that in the manifesto, why havent they done what was promised in manifesto?
April 13, 2024
They have largely done the complete reverse of what was promised.
April 13, 2024
Creating 2 or more classes of citizens is not a good idea as has been shown by the strife and censorship induced by those militants with various “protected characteristics”. Divide and rule.
April 13, 2024
Too many people die from lung cancer. Years ago people were unfortunately not aware of the damage cigarettes were doing to their lungs but nowadays there is so much evidence and you just have to look at the horrific images on cigarette packets. Surely we owe it to future generations to prevent them going down this dangerous path which in too many cases would lead to their death.
April 13, 2024
Well it will not do that will it? People will get round the rules if they wish to do so. People choose to do loads of things far more dangerous than smoking & anyway smoking is largely dying out with vaping. They cannot even stop hard drugs.
The “unequivocally safe” (as innumerate dope or liar Rishi Sunak assures us) Covid vaccines are almost certainly far more dangerous than many years of cigarette or cigar smoking.
April 13, 2024
Smoking is clearly bad for health but so are many other things.
The essence of Conservatism is freedom of choice.
The ban is inherently unConservative and wrong.
It will also encourage crime. How well is the ban on cannabis or cocaine working?
April 16, 2024
That rather depends on who is paying. If I am paying I reserve the right to have a say about how my money is used. This too is freedom of choice.
April 13, 2024
Thanks, Sir John. I can’t be the only one who is absolutely sick (very very very sick) of meddling people..be they idiot politicians.,You know who they are better than me)..be it anyone who decides they know better than an individuals re how they should live their lives. (Forget about the fact that smokers pay more tax for their smoking pleasure than probably anyone else does for his or her chosen enjoyment and contribute massively to the National coffers for this). Meddlers obviously don’t understand that the Creator (Him again!) wants us all (probably) to work out for ourselves as individuals what life could/should be for us. Not some tw-t-headed busy-body who needs to get on with his/her own miserable existence..(which should keep them busy enough for what they have to resolve for themselves).Socialism under a different name. Nanny, stifling state stuff this..I wish the heck they would concentrate on what made Hong Kong and Singapore so successful and bring a big touch of it to the UK…I know you understand me, you lovely man, Sir John….
April 13, 2024
As Boris said it is another idiotic & Bonkers idea from Sunak. A distraction from the real problems of the net harm vaccines, the mad lockdown, the lunacy of net zero, open door low skilled immigration, the destruction of the economy through over regulation, over taxation, net zero and grossly incompetent public services.
The police cannot even be bothered to stop hard drugs, investigate burglaries or shop lifting. Violent crimes out of control too. It would just drives sales on to the black market into the hands of criminal gangs.
If people are allowed to ski, ride horses, skydive, scuba dive, do boxing and are coerced into taking dangerous and unneeded Covid Vaccines… then why on earth are they to be banned from buying a box of cigarettes?
April 13, 2024
4000+ cyclists are killed or seriously injured PA in the UK circa 15 times more dangerous than going by car yet government encourages this activity, Mainly young people too. Most people who die from smoking are elderly & so rather fewer life years are lost.
April 14, 2024
Well said — yet more political theatre to keep us otherwise distracted.
April 14, 2024
Well put — yet more political theatre to keep us otherwise distracted.
April 14, 2024
It’s another Nanny state action to take away a liberty from people – How dare the government continue to play hot n cold with our freedoms — How will they obtain all the taxes lost?
I don’t smoke and have never liked the indulgences with which smokers leave a trail behind them or around them.
There are considerate smokers.
This is another political action, with health the excuse. What will be banned next? Eating ice creams in public?
Enforcing such a ban is not going to be easy. Kids will continue to ‘borrow’ fags from their parents to smoke in secret. They will easily find ways to avoid detection.
The ban shows just how deep socialism is rooted in HMG.
April 16, 2024
When I was young my brothers and I were being driven by our father on a sunny but windy day in Wales. We had ice creams and one of us opened a rear window as we overtook a cyclist. My brother’s icecream caught the wind and flew out of the window straight into the face of the cyclist. We laughed but our father stopped and gave a towel (we’d been on the beach) to the poor man to clean himself up. I really don’t think anyone, apart from the occasional Welsh cyclist, has or will have in mind prison sentences for children eating ice creams.
April 14, 2024
Do we have enough detail to decide?
How is it to be implemented? If showing photo ID which gives an age becomes the norm for a cohort to buy fags then requiring similar ID for other actions will meet less resistance. This will lead to increased demands for photo ID; uses will be found. 18/19/20-year-olds don’t mind showing ID because its a sign of not being a kid any more but this will be a moving target sticking to those just old enough for life.
Won’t it be trivially easy for an underage 30-year-old smoker to have his 31-year-old mate buy his weekly smoke? It’s illegal for an 18 to by booze for a 17 but is common and is impractical to police. A law shouldn’t be made which is easy to break. This is because cowardice rather than morals keeps many of us straight; the fear of being caught. For each law which is easy to break and is broken, the respect for the rest of the law declines. Others see the lawbreakers passing on fags as social proof and do it too. Pretty soon, it’s the norm. Attempts to then better enforce the law are resented more than expected because it’s taking away something they have.
It’s vital that any system designed makes it hard to cheat. Whether that’s packing boxes onto a lorry so none fall off the back, a new benefit claim for a neck injury which only a stands-to-benefit chiropractor can detect, or a law to prevent sale by age.
April 14, 2024
I did comment briefly about this but now feel I could add a few more remarks. I do feel very strongly that this has to be the right decision. Years ago friends of mine were totally unaware of the damage they were doing to their lungs and I watched helplessly as they suffered dreadfully and sadly died. Too many people are dying of lung cancer and Esther Rantzen has highlighted this by being so open about the fact that she is slowly dying. Nowadays there is so much evidence pointing to the terrible damage smoking does that I passionately feel the very best thing we can do for the next generations is to eventually make it impossible for them to have access to tobacco and so prevent the many deaths that would have occurred.
April 14, 2024
Smoking bad.
Banning things very bad.
We should discourage nannying by applying it first to MPs.
How about random drugs testing for all legislators, Sir John?
April 16, 2024
I would like to say ban smoking absolutely and everywhere unless there are no others within 100m of the smoker. But that seems to be extreme. Smokers have a knack of always sitting upwind in outdoor seating areas. Always. They never choose the downwind tables. They wreck my dining experience. It is presumably not deliberate but it demonstrates selfihness and a lack of consideration for others.
I doubt it is part of the calculation of smokers that they know that others will pay for their healthcare on the NHS when their smoking makes them ill.
But smoking is addictive so it is not right nor easy just to ban it. With drugs, action was taken early so that drugtaking never became a widespread social norm – only in certain circles and always in the knowledge of the illegalities involved. So that is a workable policy but it is too late for smoking.
The principle of preventing young people from becoming addicted (which has always been a principle of anti-smoking laws) and phasing in restrictions so that the older addicted or semi-addicted people who cannot break the habit are not treated over harshly is right. Education helps but it is not enough.
I don’t see restrictions or bans on smoking as nanny state. It is the flip side of the welfare state, the NHS, free at the point of delivery and paid for by the minority who are net contributors to the state. Everyone has a duty to others to maintain themselves in good health. this should not need to be made explicit. It is like good manners. If people paid in full for their healthcare they would be free to wreck their health but not if they know the result of their behaviour is that others will have to pick up the cost of repairing the damage. And that cost is not small. In May last year the annual cost in England alone of smoking-related hospital admissions and primary care treatments cost ÂŁ1.9bn, with a further ÂŁ1.1bn annually on local authority provided care for smoking-related illnesses in later life. There are further social costs estimated by ASH to be up to ÂŁ14bn annually.
So I agree with the principles but I don’t have the knowldge of the details of the proposals to comment on them.
Reply The bill does not ban smoking.