The beginning of the end for legal tobacco

 

So the day finally arrived in the UK. The prohibitionist crusade that pretended not to be prohibitionist has turned fully prohibitionist. The New Zealand style incremental purchase ban will enjoy a few years of absurdity before the puritans admit that it's absurd and demand a full ban for everyone. For the time being it looks like we'll have a Conservative government to credit for taking us to the beginning of the end. I didn't have that on my bingo card, but after 13 years of coercive Tory paternalism it shouldn't be a surprise.

I've written about it for the Spectator.

 

There is no point outlining the libertarian case against prohibition. Either you think adults should have the right to smoke tobacco or you do not. Personally, I think they should, but you have to give the devil his due. The incremental approach outlined today is politically clever because few people are prepared to defend the rights of adults who smoke as it is, let alone people who might want to smoke in the future. Eventually, in about 100 years’ time, no one will be able to smoke at all. When Sunak said that this year’s conference was going to be about ‘long-term decisions’, he wasn’t kidding.

Rather than focus on the rights of the unborn smoker, let us focus on the practical reasons why this is an absurd policy. At some point in the future, a 33-year-old will be able to buy cigarettes while a 32-year-old will not. Unless my finger is even further from the pulse of public opinion than I thought, this must strike most people as absurd, and it will be scarcely less ridiculous in a few short years when some first year university students will be able to buy cigarettes while others cannot.

 

It's also worth checking out Anabel Denham in the Telegraph...

 

It should alarm us that the Prime Minister thought long and hard about smoking prohibition. It would be more reassuring to learn that this was another knee-jerk idea spouted out of the Conservative government’s random policy generator as its remaining days in power dwindle.

And Fraser Nelson in the Spectator...

 

So this sits ill with the rest of the Sunak agenda and ‘good conservative common sense’ he was defending earlier on in his speech. I suspect it was inspired more by Wes Streeting saying that a Labour government might do this. Is this shooting your opponent’s fox, or adopting their agenda? Before this speech, I’d have said that Sunak is a liberal. I’m not quite so sure that I’d say that now.

 

But let's give the last word to Guy Bentley at Reason...

 

It's been 35 years since Britain banned smoking on airplanes, 16 years since all pubs and restaurants were forced to go smoke-free, and six years since all branding was removed from cigarette packs. At every stage, warnings that such coercive policies were a stepping stone to prohibition were ignored as hysterical overreactions by excitable libertarians. As the now-illegal cigarette ads used to say, "You've come a long way, baby."

 

I've just done a pre-recorded interview for Times Radio, debating someone from the IPPR. It's nice to be able to call these people prohibitionists to their face and  - for once, finally - they can't deny it.