Smoking ban

[OnHerSolidFoundations]

Why would you not support this?

But that will be an adult who has grown up never being able to legally buy cigarettes, so it will never come as a sudden shock to them. It will just never be part of their lives, when they're 18, 28, 58 or 98, unless they deliberately choose to break the law.

Just like spouses where at least one of them is 89 still qualify for a Married Couples tax allowance, which younger people do not. Imagine telling a very mature person aged 88 that they're too young to get that! But they've never had it, so it's as irrelevant to them at 88 as it was at 18.

I would hope that, instead of it being seen as a great freedom and benefit that they're denied, it will be viewed as a bad relic of the past that they and their generation (and future ones) have been freed from. I think, before long, it will become another of those things that fall into the category of 'why on earth did we ever think that was a good idea?'

When we eventually stopped sending children up filthy chimneys to clean them, I wonder if younger children grew up heartbroken that they would never be allowed the 'privilege' that older people had 'enjoyed'?!

Everybody is saying this, but I'm well into middle age and I have no idea where I'd buy weed, should I want to. If I wanted cigarettes, there are dozens of shops within three miles of my home where I could easily purchase them within a couple of minutes.

Making things illegal doesn't stop people from choosing to break the law; but it does take it out of the consciousness of those who choose to be law-abiding.

I don't know anyone with a 40 rashers a day bacon habit.

Also for those saying ban sugar / fat / whatever. Sugar and fat do have health benefits, we can't live of fresh air.

I'd support banning the sale of any tobacco products BUT i don't support banning the products on an rolling age basis.

Its a legally available product and as such people should have the freedom to to smoke or not, what else will be "banned" as the Govt deem its too dangerous???

How on earth will it ever be enforced ? and like anything banned, will increase its use/attractiveness.

Would be better to just keep increasing the taxes on it and extend areas where smoking is not allowed.

The practicalities do seem tricky!

Agree. Secondhand smoke is toxic. Smoking should be banned in public and anywhere that smoke might invade another’s private space such as in flats on the balcony etc and in gardens where the smoke drifts over into the neighbours garden.

Foul habit, but they can't police the rules around smoking/vaping currently in place so wouldn't expect more from new laws. We have laws in place to cover pretty much every aspect of behaviour that makes people's lives a misery, but if they're never policed, if there are never any consequences, what's the point.

I don't think anyone is suggesting just a blanket ban without backup, or grannies being 'cruelly deprived of their last pleasure ' or whatever. I've read the whole thread, and can't see anyone suggesting that.
I personally do think a total ban is appropriate. But, obviously support for existing smokers. Not sure how it would work? Maybe an allowance from the NHS, like heroine addicts get. Obviously it'd be terrible to expect smokers to go cold turkey; but the point is to remove them from shops, so nobody 'new' can buy them. Smokers shouldn't have to go cold turkey; but the nasty tobacco companies who profit, most definitely should. Dry their profits up asap.

Just have to say, much as I feel sorry for anyone who is a slave to their habit; smokers aren't really the victims here are they. Well, maybe those who started before the risks were known. They are. But, there are ever fewer of those left. Most smokers did know the risks when they started. The risks have been known for decades
The victims, are, the innocents who have to breathe in others' smoke. Kids living in households with smokers, who could be left with lifelong respiratory issues. Asthmatics forced to wait at bus stops surrounded by a cloud of smoke. Grieving loved ones whose family members' lives were cut short due to cancer, COPD or other illnesses. These are the victims.
Smokers really do need to take full responsibility for the misery they cause others. There's masses of help nowadays to give up. No excuses anymore really.

TryingToSeeTheFunnySide, absolutely. DDad was born in the 1920s. Woodbine were known as 'coffin nails' when he was a lad, so the dangers have been known about for decades. Anyone under the age of 85 who claims to not have known smoking is bad for you is having a laugh.

I must admit even I didn't know it was known that far back. Thank you for sharing this.

I'm not saying that anybody on this thread has said that, but I'm just anticipating how I think a lot of the general public would react.

I agree with you that an instant ban would be best of all, with help for people to stop, but I just can't see how that would be in any way practical.

Cold turkey treatment would be an enormous hit to the NHS all at once, and how would the economy and society be affected if everybody who smokes is suddenly taken out of the workforce for however long it takes them to get clean?

Then again, maybe all of the enormous costs for this could be forcibly transferred back to the immensely wealthy death-merchant tobacco manufacturers who have got fat from people's misery for so long, so I suppose it's not impossible.

Genuine question, though: would they have known how bad they were for you? Might they have known that they were not a particularly wise healthy choice - like bacon, UPFs and high-sugar diets nowadays - but not really appreciated the full horror of them?

After all, didn't a lot of doctors actively promote them to people as a way to calm their nerves? I may be misremembering here, but I also recall hearing them recommended to people with asthma as being good for 'exercising' their lungs?!

I think, as a general rule, giving the state power over people "in the interests of health" isn't a great idea.

"Health" is a very flexible word. Remember when it was "unhealthy" to be gay ? To the extent people were chemically castrated (for the good of society as well as their own good, of course).

It would be enforced by trading standard, just as underage alcohol and tobacco sales are now. If a trader isn't checking IDs when they sell tobacco products, then they stand to lose their premises licence. It's really not that complicated.

There is no age limit on smoking and this new legislation doesn't propose one. It's purely on the sale of tobacco products (including proxy sales).

Seriously???!!! How can you possibly compare those things?
Totally different. We KNOW without question, that smoking is a killer. There's no ambiguity. To compare banning smoking with the cruel treatment of gay men at a time of great ignorance, is pretty obscene.

@SeanBeansMealDeal
Yes, it seems to have been a gradual awakening. But public messages about the dangers mostly seemed to start emerging in the early 1960s. This is a very interesting read -
https://ash.org.uk/about/who-we-are/our-history

Homosexuals were chemically castrated because they were considered to be mentally ill and morally deficient and homosexual acts were considered to be abhorrent.

This was NEVER dressed up as a public health measure and you are utterly wrong to have posted this frankly moronic and deeply offensive analogy. The only people who chemically castrated homosexuals "for the good of society" were the fucking Nazis. You've just compared public health legislation to the Holocaust. Go you.

But that would suggest underage people don't drink/smoke/vape now, which is obviously not the case.

@Gorgonemilezola it doesn't suggest anything of the sort. Young people are allowed to drink/smoke/vape - there is no law against them doing so (well, they can't drink under the age of 5). The laws prohibit selling not consuming - and these are enforced by Trading Standards. Of course there are traders who break the law, but that doesn't mean it is bad law.

@SeanBeansMealDeal you make lots of good points.
I actually think the public would be largely on board. Apart from the smokers and a few right-wing libertarians who bang on about freedom, only when it suits them!
I love your idea of transferring the bill back to the tobacco companies. I honestly don't know how the CEOs of those companies sleep at night.
My cousin's DC went to nursery with kids whose mum always turned up in the fanciest car, dressed in the poshest clothes, living in the poshest neighborhood etc. My cousin wondered how they were so wealthy, and then discovered the mum was married to someone near the top of tobacco industry. Blood money. Utterly foul 😡

I’m not a smoker and do not like the smell but what worries me is if the government do this what next will they stop us doing or consuming because it’s unhealthy/harmful for us? Risky sports? Takeaways? Alcohol?
Too much power to too few people.

I would support a total ban on smoking in public but this proposed law seems both nonsensical and illiberal to me.
As PPs have said the reality is that it will be ridiculously difficult to police — (someone else, spouse/partner/sibling/friends) will buy your cigs for you, or you can go abroad, buy duty free or even duty paid tobacco - no-one in, say France, is going to ask a 50-year old Brit for ID to comply with a law that does not apply there.
It is probably true that social attitudes towards smoking will change, as they did towards drink driving, but there are better ways to encourage this than prohibitions which will bring serious problems, not least criminal involvement.

Nobody is saying that there wouldn't be ways around it, but the intention is there for things to (albeit slowly) head in one direction - and for the law to officially signal a stand against tobacco.

Yes, people who are just too young to buy them themselves will now have friends/spouses/partners who can get them for them - but this won't be the case forever. In decades to come, I can't imagine people wanting to marry somebody 30 years older than them, just so their spouse can buy them fags!

How many people do you know who have takeaways or do risky sports, who keep telling you how much they wish they had never started doing so, and warn younger people never to do the same as them, but find themselves summarily unable to stop doing it, however desperate they may be to stop?

Also, a takeaway is just food. Maybe not the healthiest food choice, but as part of a balanced diet, it will usually contain some nutrition and energy to keep you alive - as we all need on a very regular basis. Smoking has no health benefits whatsoever and will very likely affect your health negatively before killing you much earlier than you would otherwise have died.

I agree with you about being on the watch for governments looking to take our freedoms away; but I don't see how you can reconcile it by saying that you should never ban anything, just in case you could end up banning everything.