Isn’t banning cigarettes government interfering in our lives?
So much for “we’re making sure government stays out of your life”!
Not two days after Rishi Sunak said those words, we learn he is planning a new law to increase the age at which people can smoke, to ultimately prevent sales to people born after a certain year:
Whitehall sources said the prime minister was looking at measures similar to those brought in by New Zealand last December. They involved steadily increasing the legal smoking age so tobacco would end up never being sold to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.
I know what you’re most likely thinking: “But, Mike, smoking is a blight on the world that kills millions every year! ‘Cigareets is a blot on the whole human race/A man is a monkey with one in his face’! How can you oppose something that will ease pressure on the NHS?”
All these things are true.
But this is saying something very particular about Rishi Sunak and his government.
It’s saying they think it’s entirely unacceptable for individuals to be allowed to make a personal choice to gamble with their own health, and the government should act as nanny and take that choice away.
At the same time, it’s saying they think it is entirely acceptable for them to gamble with everybody’s health by ditching ‘Net Zero’ plans.
It’s the hypocrisy that I find unbearable. So much for the “party of choice”!
Source: Rishi Sunak considers banning cigarettes for next generation | Smoking | The Guardian
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No worries. The black market will just build into a giant manufacturer and distributer of tobacco/cigarettes and the government will lose all the tax. They can’t stop the supply of heroin or cannabis so there isn’t a chance with what is after all a mellow stimulant. People don’t die in their millions from smoking tobacco. For a start the percentage of smokers is not much above 20% and secondly people’s diet, life style, powerlessness, damp housing, depression are the chief causes of dying early. The Tory government is the biggest killer of people in the UK and putting them in the dock before deporting the entire gang of them would do wonders for people’s mental and physical health.
The policy may well be correct though.
Blackadder: “You’ve obviously never heard of irony, Baldrick/Sunak.
Baldrick/Sunak: “Yes, I have. It’s like steely and bronzy.
😂 people might react! But so far they’ve done nothing about all the other rights that affect our lives and rights they’ve taken away, no feet on the streets! If it wasn’t so pitiful it would be a joke 🤬
14.6 billion in 2011 taxes NHS cost 9.6 billion so the taxes of the smokers covered the NHS bill but hay ho tabaco today around 42 pounds for fifty grams they making how much now I say have another cigarette has once you stopped the taxes from these sales they going to look at how can they make up these taxes by coming after is it’s going to be yelling time of the people’s who wanted the ban
I think the idea is that healthcare will cost less. But your point is well taken.
I was in Prague a few days ago.My son smokes rolled cigarettes.I went to the Airport duty free shop, to buy pouches of tobacco.Went to the pay point, and was told that I couldn’t buy it because it wasn’t allowed to sell to the UK! so I had to buy them in the local supermarket in the UK!