The smoking age for cigarettes should be raised every year until no one can buy tobacco products, a British government-sponsored review has argued.
In the latest nanny state move from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government, a review commissioned by Health Secretary Sajid Javid — a former smoker — has called for the legal age to purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products to be raised by one year every year until smoking is effectively banned in Britain.
The review by the former CEO of the Barnardo’s children’s charity, Javed Khan, also called for the imposition of more taxes on tobacco firms, saying that an additional £700 million should be levied against the industry, and thereby consumers, to fund Britain’s faltering socialised healthcare system, the National Health Service (NHS).
Supermarkets and websites should also be prohibited from selling tobacco products, the report argued, and those shops still allowed to sell them should have to apply to the government for a licence akin to that needed to sell liquor.
“A smoke-free society should be a social norm – but to achieve this, we must do more to stop people taking up smoking, help those who already smoke and support those who are disproportionately impacted by smoking,” Khan said.
“My proposals are not just a plan for this government, but successive governments too. To truly achieve a smoke-free society in our great country, we need to commit to making smoking obsolete, once and for all.”
According to the report, some six million people are smokers in England and it costs the National Health Service around £2.4 billion in smoking-related healthcare costs, with 64,000 deaths per year.
Khan said that if no additional action is taken by the government, it will miss the target of “smoke-free by 2030” (less than five per cent of the population) by seven years, adding that the smoking rate among the poorest areas of the country will not fall below the five per cent target until 2044.
Boris Johnson’s government has already implemented nanny state regulations on smoking, including an EU-drafted law to ban menthol cigarettes, and imposed additional taxes on tobacco products.
Khan also called for £125 million to spend on healthcare services to help people quit smoking and for doctors to provide vapes to patients, as they are an “effective tool to help people to quit smoking tobacco”.
“We know vapes are not a ‘silver bullet’ nor are they totally risk-free, but the alternative is far worse,” the review claimed.
The policy advocated by Khan to raise the legal smoking age mirrors that of the socialist-run government of New Zealand, which is set to increase the legal age every year following 2027 with the aim of effectively banning anyone born after the year of 2008 from ever being allowed to smoke.
The director of the smoking lobby group Forest, Simon Clark, condemned the idea, saying that “creeping prohibition won’t stop young adults smoking.
“It will simply drive the sale of tobacco underground and consumers will buy cigarettes on the black market where no-one pays tax and products are completely unregulated.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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