Do you think smoking will be outlawed in your lifetime?

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Obviously v.v. bad for you (directly or passively) - already banned in public places etc. Young people continue to start smoking (although I don’t know the figures for this anecdata)

My DM had been a smoker all her life and her lungs are giving up. Nothing official as she won’t go to the drs but wheezes and coughs all the time.

It’s gotten me thinking that a full ban on selling tobacco/smoking in public must be on the cards at some point - but when?

I heard that the intention is to have eradicates smoking by 2030.

The government make a huge amount from people smoking, the tobacco companies are ruthless too.
I doubt we'll ever stop people smoking.

Yes, definitely. I think we'll have a ban on it in all public places, including outdoors within 5 years. Hope so anyway.

I don't think they will need to outlaw it. The numbers of people smoking and starting smoking have been dropping for decades and you can't really smoke anywhere publically anymore. I think in another couple of decades it simply won't be financially feasible to sell them, and no one will start anymore.

Not what you're asking at all but DH and I were talking the other day about if children (grown up or otherwise) suffered health problems as a result of their parents smoking around them at home or in cars if they could potentially sue them for GBH etc.

I personally would like to see smoking eradicated from all public places. And although I am sort of a 'what people do in their own homes is their own business' type of person I can't help feeling that it is wrong that parents can inflict smoking on their children who do not have a choice.

I say that as someone whose mother smoked 20 a day during pregnancy and all through my childhood.

Pointless to outlaw it. Banning substances doesn’t work. Look at how prevalent cannabis is. I’d rather the revenue was kept away from criminals.

But it’s thankfully falling out “normal”. I think society will naturally all-but-eradicate it in a decade or two.

@chovihano I just had a quick google hoping to prove you wrong but came up with this www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/18/comes-smokers-burden-nhs-may-contribute-tax-take/amp/ looks like it’s not cost efficient for the government to ban it

If it is outlawed it will be interesting how the government will replace what they gain from tax. I guess the taxpayer will have to stump up a lot more money to cover it.
Or the NHS, Schools, and welfare will be cut, or go completely to replace the loss.

Unfortunately, although you can’t smoke inside any more, there are plenty of outdoor spaces you can still smoke in publicly - in the street, dedicated smoking areas in bars and restaurants etc...

I just saw this on the news, I think it will just be replaced by vaping.

Absolutely a ban would criminalise users which is why I wondered if the sale of tobacco could be further restricted/banned, rather than the use.

@ParadiseLaundry valid point. I have asthma - doesn’t run in my family but both parents smoked heavily at home

@Chovihano yup - the nhs would still have to cover the cost of smoking related illnesses but without the revenue from tobacco sales - catch 22.

No because they make too much taxes on them.
Even as non smoker I thought the ban was unfair. If you dont want people to smoke then just don't sell them, but to sell them and tell people they can't smoke them.
Plus itd be a tad out of order to tell people they can't smoke in their own home. !!!!!!. Not only that but people will just get them from the black market.
You'll never stop people smoking.

I live near a secondary school and it's common for children get out of the gates and light up. I want to tell them that my brother-in-law died in his early 40s because he smoked, but it would fall on deaf ears.

Yy. Not cost effective to ban and actually the only people i know who know smoke its a healthier form of stress relief than the other options.

I too worry a lot about vaping. I see the youth doing it in numbers equivalent to smoking in my youth. Its also seen as acceptable to vape around none vapers which i really dont like. Smokers a least are knowadays generally apologetic. In this country at least.

Attitude towards smoking is what puts me off other European countries

Hasn't vaping been found to be as bad as smoking. Plus they've also started a lot fires, haven't they.
Remember that Lady where one exploded as she smoking. I'm not sure what happened to her. Will have to try and Google.

Hopefully, and vaping too!

I hope so. I was brought up in a house with two heavy smokers (and grandparents all smoked around us). I'm asthmatic, and they still continued to smoke around me even after diagnosis. If people want to smoke in their own home I have no objection, but I'd like to see it outlawed in all public spaces. Sick of seeing fag ends littered all over the place.

It’s not a logical argument though, is it. If people don’t smoke, they will have lots of spare cash to spend on different things, paying more VAT for example. The article assumes they will just bank the money and do nothing with it, so a net loss of tax revenue.

History has told us time after time after time that prohibition doesn't work. We don't need cigarette dealers any more than we need heroin dealers, and you'd have to be a special kind of idiot to think that a ban would ever actually work.

If anything, I think in our life time, we will see a loosening on laws and bans on hard drugs to allow them to be sold and used in controlled ways, which will vastly reduce the harm to the user and society as a whole.

Banning would be pointless and counterproductive. (I know this from GCSE history).

Banning smoking in public places - that is different.

There you go, us smokers save you all a fortune in tax.
I do think fewer are starting, more kids are vaping too.
The only thing is the tobacco companies aren't stupid and i see vaping being pulled and then they are addicted to nicotine and start fags.

I read something on Instagram that said within the next 30 years we would have had the first nicotine free generation since smoking began, until they invented vapes. I think as long as there is money to be made it will stick around in some form.

I hope not. We need the taxes