I voted against the second reading of the Conservative Government’s Smoking and Vaping Bill earlier this year. I was challenged about my decision at the Hustings during the election campaign by my Labour opponent, who is a local family doctor. My reason for having voted against the measure is simple: I believe that adults should be able to make up their own minds about whether they should smoke or not, and it is no business of government to interfere with their liberty to do so.
Frankly, I thought the bill was absurd and would be unenforceable. It would have allowed some adults to purchase cigarettes and tobacco products, whilst denying that possibility to other younger adults: Some adults would have a right to smoke, but others would not.
Had the measure become law, it would have provided a new bureaucratic overhead for each transaction at the tobacconist or other retailer’s counter.
Rishi’s Bill never made it to the statute book because Parliament was dissolved for the general election. The new Labour Government has made clear its intention to reintroduce the Bill with the same absurd distinction based on the age of adults.
In addition, it has trailed the possibility that it will include within the new bill, a provision to ban smoking in public places. In particular, it has pubs and other hospitality venues in its sights. This might have a significant damaging impact on the trade which is already experiencing a worrying number of closures.
The argument that smoking outside might impact the health of third parties, particularly when it is often in a designated separate area, is pretty difficult to sustain.
Ministers, and many of our citizens, especially in the medical professions, strongly disapprove of smoking. The mark of a free society, however, is that -within reason- we tolerate things of which we disapprove. It is difficult not to believe that adults are to be forbidden from smoking in public, because other adults and the new government just don’t like it.
The Prime Minister’s stated rationale for making the proposal is based on the need to protect the NHS from having to treat a cause of so much avoidable death.
Given our socialised healthcare system, there is a logic for coercive control over the lifestyle choices of individuals which might place too great a burden on the medical provision that has to be shared for everyone.
Just reflect for a moment however, where this principle is leading. It is the thin end of a very thick wedge. It opens the door to interference with all sorts of lifestyle choices, what we eat, drink, and even what potentially dangerous hobbies we might be allowed enjoy.
Or, was the real purpose of this announcement to grab the headline, taking the attention away from other government woes?