I support the ban, there’s more than enough evidence for one & if you tried to introduce tobacco today knowing the effects you’d be laughed at
Good. Either ban it for everyone, or leave it as it is. This policy is blatantly discriminatory.
Bans like this only create untaxable black markets and allow criminals to gain an income stream.
It’s stupid
I’m normally opposed to the government banning things as a response to problems, but not sure about tobacco.
Maybe I’m not thinking of something.
For example, I’m for legalising (or at least totally decriminalising) drugs for personal use, treating it like a health issue as opposed to a criminal one, for example. The war on drugs has failed. Time to try something new.
I can even see an argument (which I think I’m in favour of) for the government to legalise the production and sale of certain substances.
Ensuring the purity and quality makes people much safer than relying on criminals and substances cut with fuck knows what, and pills pressed in someone’s shed. You can also have things like safe consumption rooms and the tax money could be used to fund treatment services etc.
You’d also remove a lot of money and power criminal gangs.
Doesn’t banning tobacco have the same problems?
Even while totally legal, you can find cheap fags or tobacco being sold in pubs up and down the country, or even under the counter in corner shops on estates all over the place. It’ll probably push the price up and make it more profitable,
I suppose even then it’s much better than it being available in every shop everywhere. The folk who want to seek them out still will, but most probably wouldn’t.
If the purity and safety is an issue, and keeping money away from criminals, maybe something like having a few dedicated tobacconists would be a better solution than the current widespread availability. A sort of middle ground.
I don’t know. Instinctively I’m against bans, but I’m not sure I see a single good reason for tobacco to be legal outside of personal freedom to make your own choices (which is an important one tbf).
Cool, people will just get tobacco off their tobacco dealer rather than buying it in a shop and paying tax.
Everyone’s talking about how it will just create the blackmarket for tobacco, and I’m not disagreeing that’s probably the case. But acting like just as many people will end up smoking is a little bit obtuse. It’s not like everyone’s nan is going down the corner to buy the daily bag of coke.
At the very least the ban will remove a significant chunk of new generations desire to smoke. If you’re going to buy something illegal surely you’re going to buy one of the fun ones?
>He added: “You could end up in a few decades time with a 75 year-old and 74 year-old couple, the wife’s allowed to go and buy fags but the husband isn’t. You shouldn’t have two tiers of rights.”
Yes, that’s literally the point to phase out smoking. Making it ridiculous is the goal.
>Mr Cole-Hamilton said: “I believe in bodily autonomy. If you want to harm your body that’s on you.”
Kind of like how if you want to harm your country you vote for this tube. How has the party of social unity and reform fallen to *”well people should be allowed to become a burden on the healthcare system if they want”*?
You could ban tobacco entirely by lumping it in with other controlled substances, like marijuana, remove it from legal sale immediately and then wait for the consequences. I don’t know if there are still millions of smokers in the UK, or merely hundreds of thousands, but they’d all have to suffer withdrawal symptoms at the same time – the irritability and mood swings, the headaches and feeling miserable for weeks. And, just like with passive smoking, so will the rest of us!
This is the scenario in which the much talked about black market for cigarettes would sprout. All those people, suddenly cut off? Drug dealers would be making a mint within weeks. You think it’s expensive to buy a 20 deck from Tesco? Wait til the guys who are peddling smack become the only source. Wait til nicotine really does become a gateway drug.
Or, we can do something like this. A progressive ban that stops new people from taking up smoking. Or, at the very least, makes it more difficult for them. People who are currently old enough to smoke will be able to smoke for the rest of their lives, legally.
There will still be new smokers, because young people do stupid things. As long as cigarettes are available in shops, people will buy them, and people will smoke them. The whole purpose of this law is to make the overall number of those people go down.
Rare W for the Lib Dems. It’s a stupid policy.
When you can buy (and smoke) the nominally entirely illegal cannabis on any street corner, the idea that this is going to do anything other than transfer income from shops to criminal gangs is utterly fanciful.
This kind of nanny state-ism has never worked, and never will. We created the vast problem with drugs in the 1960s and 70s when we decided to criminalise and ban them rather than regulate them, and we’ve never learned since.
Finally a liberal policy.
Smoking ban is unworkable.
Nanny state.
People can die for your country but can’t smoke a cigarette.
Fk O then Fk O again.
Just make the limit 21. A sensible approach.
It’s ageist as well.
Dumbest policy ever and I don’t even smoke.
Smoking brings in about £8.9 billion a year to the treasury
However – there are estimates it costs the country twice that in costs to the NHS and lost productivity.
The NHS costs are going to be baked in for a generation. People are still going to get sick and get cancer even if there was a total ban tomorrow- the damage has been done. However – tax income from smoking is going to fall quite quickly.
This will result in a cost to this policy – likely quite a few billions a year. Really hope that is understood by Westminster.
Because of how expensive the tax is on tobacco, everyone I know who smokes buys it from newsagents who buy in bulk abroad already. I can’t help but think this will just keep enterprising newsagents taking cash in hand for cheap cigarettes
Does anyone really care what the libs think since they’re just closet tories with less seats than a taxi
Banning plants is mental
I support a ban on cigarettes but I do see the potential for a nicotine only alternative.
All the additives and the second-hand smoke are part of what makes cigarettes so bad for people. Nicotine itself is a stimulant that doesn’t even have direct carcinogenic links as of current studies. People can legally have as much caffeine as they want which is another similar stimulant.
First they came for the cigarettes and then they came for pies!
Lib Dems are a bunch of morons, just like all politicians. Just in it for the money and fuck everyone else! We need a revolution.
Strange that a liberal would be against imposing rules on personal liberties. WHAT A SCOOP!
18 comments
I support the ban, there’s more than enough evidence for one & if you tried to introduce tobacco today knowing the effects you’d be laughed at
Good. Either ban it for everyone, or leave it as it is. This policy is blatantly discriminatory.
Bans like this only create untaxable black markets and allow criminals to gain an income stream.
It’s stupid
I’m normally opposed to the government banning things as a response to problems, but not sure about tobacco.
Maybe I’m not thinking of something.
For example, I’m for legalising (or at least totally decriminalising) drugs for personal use, treating it like a health issue as opposed to a criminal one, for example. The war on drugs has failed. Time to try something new.
I can even see an argument (which I think I’m in favour of) for the government to legalise the production and sale of certain substances.
Ensuring the purity and quality makes people much safer than relying on criminals and substances cut with fuck knows what, and pills pressed in someone’s shed. You can also have things like safe consumption rooms and the tax money could be used to fund treatment services etc.
You’d also remove a lot of money and power criminal gangs.
Doesn’t banning tobacco have the same problems?
Even while totally legal, you can find cheap fags or tobacco being sold in pubs up and down the country, or even under the counter in corner shops on estates all over the place. It’ll probably push the price up and make it more profitable,
I suppose even then it’s much better than it being available in every shop everywhere. The folk who want to seek them out still will, but most probably wouldn’t.
If the purity and safety is an issue, and keeping money away from criminals, maybe something like having a few dedicated tobacconists would be a better solution than the current widespread availability. A sort of middle ground.
I don’t know. Instinctively I’m against bans, but I’m not sure I see a single good reason for tobacco to be legal outside of personal freedom to make your own choices (which is an important one tbf).
Cool, people will just get tobacco off their tobacco dealer rather than buying it in a shop and paying tax.
Everyone’s talking about how it will just create the blackmarket for tobacco, and I’m not disagreeing that’s probably the case. But acting like just as many people will end up smoking is a little bit obtuse. It’s not like everyone’s nan is going down the corner to buy the daily bag of coke.
At the very least the ban will remove a significant chunk of new generations desire to smoke. If you’re going to buy something illegal surely you’re going to buy one of the fun ones?
>He added: “You could end up in a few decades time with a 75 year-old and 74 year-old couple, the wife’s allowed to go and buy fags but the husband isn’t. You shouldn’t have two tiers of rights.”
Yes, that’s literally the point to phase out smoking. Making it ridiculous is the goal.
>Mr Cole-Hamilton said: “I believe in bodily autonomy. If you want to harm your body that’s on you.”
Kind of like how if you want to harm your country you vote for this tube. How has the party of social unity and reform fallen to *”well people should be allowed to become a burden on the healthcare system if they want”*?
You could ban tobacco entirely by lumping it in with other controlled substances, like marijuana, remove it from legal sale immediately and then wait for the consequences. I don’t know if there are still millions of smokers in the UK, or merely hundreds of thousands, but they’d all have to suffer withdrawal symptoms at the same time – the irritability and mood swings, the headaches and feeling miserable for weeks. And, just like with passive smoking, so will the rest of us!
This is the scenario in which the much talked about black market for cigarettes would sprout. All those people, suddenly cut off? Drug dealers would be making a mint within weeks. You think it’s expensive to buy a 20 deck from Tesco? Wait til the guys who are peddling smack become the only source. Wait til nicotine really does become a gateway drug.
Or, we can do something like this. A progressive ban that stops new people from taking up smoking. Or, at the very least, makes it more difficult for them. People who are currently old enough to smoke will be able to smoke for the rest of their lives, legally.
There will still be new smokers, because young people do stupid things. As long as cigarettes are available in shops, people will buy them, and people will smoke them. The whole purpose of this law is to make the overall number of those people go down.
Rare W for the Lib Dems. It’s a stupid policy.
When you can buy (and smoke) the nominally entirely illegal cannabis on any street corner, the idea that this is going to do anything other than transfer income from shops to criminal gangs is utterly fanciful.
This kind of nanny state-ism has never worked, and never will. We created the vast problem with drugs in the 1960s and 70s when we decided to criminalise and ban them rather than regulate them, and we’ve never learned since.
Finally a liberal policy.
Smoking ban is unworkable.
Nanny state.
People can die for your country but can’t smoke a cigarette.
Fk O then Fk O again.
Just make the limit 21. A sensible approach.
It’s ageist as well.
Dumbest policy ever and I don’t even smoke.
Smoking brings in about £8.9 billion a year to the treasury
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/tobacco-bulletin/tobacco-statistics-commentary-april-2024
However – there are estimates it costs the country twice that in costs to the NHS and lost productivity.
The NHS costs are going to be baked in for a generation. People are still going to get sick and get cancer even if there was a total ban tomorrow- the damage has been done. However – tax income from smoking is going to fall quite quickly.
This will result in a cost to this policy – likely quite a few billions a year. Really hope that is understood by Westminster.
Because of how expensive the tax is on tobacco, everyone I know who smokes buys it from newsagents who buy in bulk abroad already. I can’t help but think this will just keep enterprising newsagents taking cash in hand for cheap cigarettes
Does anyone really care what the libs think since they’re just closet tories with less seats than a taxi
Banning plants is mental
I support a ban on cigarettes but I do see the potential for a nicotine only alternative.
All the additives and the second-hand smoke are part of what makes cigarettes so bad for people. Nicotine itself is a stimulant that doesn’t even have direct carcinogenic links as of current studies. People can legally have as much caffeine as they want which is another similar stimulant.
First they came for the cigarettes and then they came for pies!
Lib Dems are a bunch of morons, just like all politicians. Just in it for the money and fuck everyone else! We need a revolution.
Strange that a liberal would be against imposing rules on personal liberties. WHAT A SCOOP!
Comments are closed.