Georgia L Gilholy is a Young Voices UK contributor.
If I were to collect caricatures of nanny-state health proposals, the likes of which the Daily Mail‘s worst noughties nightmares could only dream of parodying, I imagine it would look something like last week’s independent smoking review.
Dr Javed Khan’s paper, commissioned by Sajid Javid, contains a series of questionable ideas to make England “smoke-free by 2030”.
Naturally, the most headline-grabbing proposal of them all was Khan’s support for raising the age at which it is legal to purchase cigarettes by a year each year until no one in the UK can legally buy them.
Do we really want to see swathes of British adults once again condemned to their adolescent lingering in the vicinity of an off-licence, hoping to pluck up the courage to ask someone a year their senior to buy them a pack of cigarettes? Surely it is unjust that adults expected to burden so many other responsibilities are robbed of their liberty to light up the occasional fag?
It is also notable that both Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the latter of which openly support the legalisation of cannabis – the psychological risks of which are undoubtedly more dangerous than cigarettes – have maintained a stony silence since the publication of Khan’s review.
Given the chunk of free-market policy wonks and Conservative backbenchers also campaigning for cannabis legalisation, could it soon could become perfectly legal to purchase cannabis, while risking arrest or eviction from social housing for lighting up a cigarette?
Indeed, Khan aims to ban smoking from most new social housing developments, complaining that:
“People who rent with local authorities or are with a housing association are nearly three times more likely to smoke than those who have a mortgage.”
Translation: people more likely to be on lower incomes are more likely to smoke and should be banned from doing so by the state, even if it is in their own homes.
Khan also dreams of swiftly hiking the cost of tobacco duties by upwards of 30 per cent across all tobacco products. This would substantially increase the price at a time when the price of a 20-pack has already climbed to around £14. No doubt this policy would function as nothing short of a blessing for Britain’s already roaring tobacco black market.
It must too be noted that the contrast in our attitude to alcohol and cigarettes is striking. It is currently impossible to think of a government review seriously recommending such dramatic restrictions on alcohol.
In 2017, 28 per cent of UK men and 14 per cent of UK women aged 16 years and over drank more than 14 units of alcohol per week. In 2017, 36 per cent of men and 20 per cent of women between the ages of 55 to 64 most commonly drank over 14 units in a week. Unsurprisingly, this rose over the pandemic.
Alcohol is also quite clearly more of an immediate danger, but it is so ingrained in our way of life that its risks are rarely given a second thought.
How many of us have heard of a person crashing their car, getting lost in the middle of the night, or beating up their partner after smoking a packet of Silk Cuts? How many of us know people who have done such things, or been victims of them, because of alcohol consumption?
While some utilitarians may complain that a clampdown on cigarettes is necessary to relieve pressure on an already-beleaguered NHS, it is worth noting that, unlike alcohol, tobacco duties have long outstripped the health cost to the NHS from their use.
Furthermore, if we are to accept the premise, as so many did during Covid, that potential impact to the NHS is deserving of tyrannical mandates, why stop at cigarettes? By this logic, why not allow the state to ban alcohol, junk food, sedentary lifestyles, or types of sexual activity more at a heightened risk of disease transmission?
Even caffeine could fall under the remit of Khan’s urge to ban “addictions”.
Another of Dr Khan’s more ludicrous suggestions is that:
“…all films, TV shows and online media that contain tobacco imagery on screen should be classified as unsuitable for viewing by persons aged under 18 years, and television programmes that include tobacco imagery to be broadcast after the 9pm watershed. [The aforementioned media] be required to display an on-screen health warning while such imagery is visible.”
This amounts to little more than cultural vandalism under the excuse of safeguarding the young, many of whom have already inherited the increased social taboo surrounding smoking.
Vast catalogues of twentieth-century films and television contain “tobacco imagery” simply because smoking was more commonplace then, not least because its health impacts were poorly understood until the 1960s. I pray I do not live to see the day when we have to endure the flashing up of a public health warning if Bette Davis or Bet Lynch so much as reach for a lighter.
Why even stop at the visual arts? Is the mention of Sherlock’s nicotine addiction or Gandalf’s puffing on “pipe-weed” enough to provoke Khan’s lust for censorship?f
Just as his idea to interfere in media would could prove yet another hindrance to an already struggling entertainment industry, Khan’s plot to bar smoking from beer gardens could be the final blow to the pub sector after years of lamentable struggles.
This decline has already been exacerbated by Tony Blair’s indoor smoking ban, the proliferation of cheaper shop-sold booze, and the pandemic’s sledgehammer to the hospitality sector. It would be irresponsible to throw yet another obstacle at businesses as inflation soars and the threat of a recession looms.
Khan’s paper also complains that: “During the pandemic, the proportion of young adults aged 18 to 24 who smoke rose from one in four to one in three.”
Could this possibly be because so many young people were told to stay in their houses regardless of the risk of social isolation, depression, anxiety and physical degeneration, on the advice of the very same public health officials cheerleading this review?
Shut down social venues, schools, and gyms, and send CCTV drones to shame people walking in the middle of the countryside, but god forbid an adult seeks to take the edge off their day by buying a packet of cigarettes.
While any civilised society requires a balance between liberty and responsibility, Dr Khan’s crackpot plans to phase out smoking entirely risk obliterating any sense of a measured equilibrium altogether. After years of being told to sit inside and stay away from friends and family for the sake of safety, let’s leave Brits alone to enjoy a cigarette if they happen to fancy one.