Ban smoking for those born after 2000 - what do you think?

[funambulist]

www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/23/doctors-vote-cigarette-sale-ban-children-born-2000

I hope I've managed to do the link properly.

Tomorrow, the British Medical Association are having a vote on whether push for a permanent ban on the sale of cigarettes to those born after 2000. Those born in 2000 are 12 or 13 years old now, so, hopefully, not yet smoking. Is this a good way of ensuring that they never take it up and thus preventing the health consequences for the next generation?

I think finding out where under 18's buy or get their tobacco from and punishing/fining those people/ shops and companies would be a good idea. More policing of the systems we already have is needed.

Also, ensuring that shops demand ID (which I know can be faked easily) all of the time would be good too. Raising the age to 21 to make it even harder for a teen that might think twice if the legal age is raised.

Someone that I know of who smokes and is underage gets them from her father. Her older brother would probably be another source.

I don't know the solution. But I like AMuminScotland's idea up thread of making it a 'drug habit'. Lots of these young people would be appalled to equate the addictive cigarettes they choose with illegal drugs. Are they happy to take heroin/coke/ etc? (but then they'd say tobacco is legal...Argh!)

We do have something that are age dependent even in adult. Pension age for example was set and then changed.
Look I don't think banning is necessarily the way to go but the way suggested by the BMA seams complicated.

Pension age has nothing to do with banning something for 25 year olds but not 26 year olds, for example, and then moving up this limit each consecutive year so that the younger will never have the right and the older always will.

There was a suggestion that cigarettes should be banned for under-40s. Because overnight that would make them hopelessly uncool and unattractive to children/teenagers

I think the proposal has merit. No individual is losing rights s/he already has.

But since no government actually has an interest in banning smoking (the cost to the NHS is balanced against state pension savings and tax income, and theycan keep smoking as a way of stigmatising The Feckless Poor) it won't happen.

www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/24/cigarette-ban-british-medical-association

The BMA have voted in favour of the motion to ban smoking for those born after 2000 so will now lobby the Government to introduce the ban. On previous occasions the BMA successfully lobbied the Government to ban smoking in public places and in cars carrying children.

If an outright ban ever happened, the NHS would collapse. The tax that smokers bring in far outweigh the costs of medical treatment for them. There is NO way the Government will support this - unless they WANT the NHS to disappear.

And there's the rub...

I can't see how it would work unless they intended to fine to make up for the loss they would receive from the enormous profit they make from each cigarette sold. The gov would be skint

How do they propose to police that?

I don't think this is a bad idea - in theory. However -

I think a moving age limit is a big precedent to set and probably a dangerous one - I can't see this being made law any time soon.

We already can't enforce the 18 age limit, how are we going to enforce this? I feel sorry for future shop staff if this becomes law.

If this is supposed to be preventative then 2000 is too early, it needs to be 2004 (current 10 y/o's) at least.

I wonder if anybody has calculated the amount of extra tax everyone will have to pay? It's not only the loss of tax from tobacco sales that needs to be considered but the extra cost of pensions and old age care. This is not a reason for not doing it but it's an important consideration.

BMA would actually achieve more if they reversed their ridiculous (and now fairly isolated) position on ecigs and instead aligned themselves with ASH, the Royal College of Physicians, Public Health England etc. Ecigs have the potential to make smoking obsolete within a couple of decades. Unless we fuck it up.

Banning probably wouldn't work as everyone has said it will just make more appealing and drive it underground and goodness knows what will be in cigarettes then - look at the shit they cut cocaine with, iyswim?

But (as a young-looking smoker myself) I do feel shops need to be id-ing people buying them. I can't actually remember the last time anyone bothered to ID me for anything, and I'm only 22. Maybe it's just me but I thought ID was there for a reason and should be used? All the badges staff wear about being under 25 and getting questioned at the till, does it all mean nothing? I know of underage smokers and drinkers who buy at places I have been to that don't ID people and honestly I think it's pretty bad.

Rambled a bit, did that make any sense?

Should the suggested economic benefits of the tobacco trade weigh with us given the number of deaths and ill health caused? After all Britain benefited economically from the slave trade and from the opium trade and I believe that similar economic arguments were put forward to oppose a ban on those activities.

The BMA suggestion would result in a very gradual reduction in smoking (rates are already going down anyway) so there would be no sudden loss in tax. No doubt the Government would find other things to tax if or when there are no more smokers.

Why not just have a blanket ban on cigarettes? They prove fatal for 50%+ of users so I'd support it. Hard to police but I'd rather see money and effort put into a blanket ban than the post 2000 idea.

My mum died from liver cancer having had a bottle of wine a year (glass at Christmas and glass at new year) but was a smoker. My dad died from throat cancer but didn't smoke and was a drinker

funambulist, as I said, economics is not a reason to not do this, but there will be financial implications for everyone which need thinking about and budgeting for carefully. Tax loss is likely to be small change in comparison with the costs of more people living longer.

I would be more in favour of a blanket ban brought in with a decent amount of notice as it would be fairer, easier to pass as law and easier to enforce. As I said though, if they don't fuck up ecigs, we could probably do nothing and watch the quiet death of smoking in a relatively short period of time.

A blanket ban on cigarettes would be difficult in lots of ways and much harder to bring into law I suspect.

The advantage of the gradual ban proposed by the BMA is that current (legal) smokers are unaffected. In theory all it should do is prevent / make it harder for young nonsmokers to take it up. Of course if it were passed into law tomorrow, some smokers would be affected. There are some 13 and 14 year old smokers, but the numbers are relatively low, I think. About 5% of 14 year olds smoke and they are already banned from buying cigarettes anyway as they are under 18.

I think that the BMA proposal is more realistic than a complete ban. Anti-smoking legislation tends to be incremental. When I watch old films and documentaries, or even just remember my childhood I am staggered that smoking was once allowed on planes and in restaurants. Does anyone else remember choking on smoke in the "non-smoking" section of the restaurant? It would be unthinkable to smoke on a plane now. Perhaps this proposal won't seem so outlandish in another 20 years or so.

This will just make smoking more attractive, teens are rebellious and even more so if actually completely denied something.

This nanny state gets mire ridiculous by the day.

We will all die one day & everyone likes something that is bad for them. As long as you are over 16 it's your own body, no body should be able to rule what you do with it unless it's class A drugs for example.

Moderation is key

The numbers are not small. 200,000 children aged 11-15 start smoking in the UK each year. If they want to do this it should target those born 2004 or later.

I don't think this is more realistic than a complete ban because a rolling age limit is a completely new thing. I think it would have trouble getting through parliament.

The kind of 'incremental' tobacco control legislation we have at the moment is actually pretty ineffective. Meanwhile it's cruel, disproportionately affects poor people and is deeply hypocritical. It's a licence for everybody to treat smokers like shit while the government still rakes in the cash.

I just mean that pension age has been moved recently so before younger adults could access it and now you have to be older.

simply put:

You can't ban alcohol, because easily made in your home from sugar and yeast

The govt won't ban cigarettes as it brings in c. £12bn a year in tax and VAT, so far more than it costs - remember smokers subsidise your NHS and pensions, because they die young and do not need elderly care

I don't think this is well thought through at all. I would like to see a smoke-free world - but in reality this will only create a shiny new black market for criminals to make their fortune. The same will happen if we ban alcohol - people will brew stuff at home, people will distil at home. Here too the black market will step in and the upshot will be that we have no quality control. Whether people distil at home or buy bootleg alcohol, they will risk drinking methanol, which carries terrible health risks.

If we really want to do something about smoking, we should do something about economic inequality. The percentage of people on low incomes who smoke is far, far higher than that among people on higher incomes, and in addition these people spend a large proportion of their income on smoking.

Simply cynical; that if a government receives more revenue for cigarettes than it pays out in health costs, then it will never try to micro (or totally) ban cigarettes.

A government trying to ban a section of society, from a legal substance for everyone else in the UK - and indeed, legal to everyone else in the world - and has access to on every one of their High Streets, is totally spinning its expensive wheels.

Furthermore putting an extras burden on law enforcement/border controls, who rumour has it, have better things to do, whilst still needing to handle the future health costs of those who ‘illegally’ obtained that substance, seems to me a zero sum game .

I agree that banning a substance makes using it ‘cool’ and just promotes a vibrant ‘black market’ in the product, especially for one so easily obtainable on the High Street from those older, but don’t know better. IMO.

Finally, ban cigarettes and what does that do to people’s food intake/obesity when their appetite increases and future ‘fat club’ NHS bills?

Arguably if they get their taste buds back ex smokers might go for quality over junk food quantity, I have no idea, but when you try to socially engineer people’s choices/habits, especially ones they believe ‘pleasurable’, who knows how else they might get their jollies.

Why would a blanket ban on cigarettes be hard to implement? If they can't be sold legally they can't be bought legally. If you stop import and properly police customs then you'd find it easier than, say, marihuana or cocaine I would have thought? Or just make each pack of cigarettes cost £1200 (entirely random figure).

I am fed up with the my mum died of liver cancer and never drank a drop arguments. Always exceptions but we KNOW alcohol and tobacco are the direct cause of deaths. (And my mum died of lung cancer. Not a smoker)

Ban cigarettes altogether

Make smokers pay for their healthcare

Are some of you for real? I take it the people spouting this absolute twaddle don't smoke? Do you know how much tax smokers pay on fags and tobacco? Give your heads a wobble will you