47 lions

MPs voted for the Tobacco and Vapes Bill yesterday by a landslide. The Bill legislates for the gradual prohibition of all tobacco products, a total ban on e-cigarette advertising and allows Wes Streeting to do whatever he likes with vape flavours, smoking bans, vaping bans, vape packaging, etc.

Labour MPs were given questions to ask and told what to think by the leadership. Not a single one voted against prohibition. Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs were given a free vote. 35 Tories, 7 Lib Dems and 4 Reform MPs voted against. Rishi Sunak, whose 'legacy' this was supposed to be, didn't bother to turn up to vote.

The conscience of these 47 MPs is clear. They could have gone with the crowd - they had no chance of winning - but they stood up for personal liberty. There are 72 Lib Dems so seven voting against isn't much, but it shows that liberalism hasn't been completely snuffed out in the party. 

It's been fifteen years since I published Velvet Glove, Iron Fist, the last chapters of which warned about the looming threat of prohibition and the slippery slope of regulation from tobacco to food and alcohol. I shouldn't be surprised that prohibition has returned and that the government is now planning taxes on 'junk food', but I never thought that Britain would be first out of the blocks with Prohibition 2.0. As one of the more prominent defenders of smokers' rights in the UK, this is obviously sub-optimal.

The more I think about it, the less it matters. The generational ban won't affect anybody until 2027 and won't really be noticeable until around 2030. Vaping is making cigarettes obsolete, especially among young people, but even if an 18 year old wanted to smoke, why would they buy cigarettes legally? 

I was on a night out in a city in the north-west recently when the trusty vape that I've had for two years finally packed up. I went to a shop to get a disposable vape and a pack of cigarettes in case I didn't like the disposable vape (I'm not into sweet flavours). I picked out a disposable vape, picked out a lighter and asked the guy behind the counter if he sold cigarettes. He pulled up a big plastic bag and showed me what he had - all loose packs with health warnings in a variety of different languages, obviously not legal. I chose a pack of Marlboro Touch, whatever that is, and he sold me the lot - disposable vape, lighter and a pack of premium cigarettes - for £14. The cigarettes alone are worth more than that on the legal market. The guy had never seen me before. I could have been anybody. The shop was in the middle of the city centre.

This is happening up and down the country. Tax morale among smokers is at rock bottom and the legal market is collapsing. The government has its head in the sand and no one is going to do anything about it. We know from Australia how bad this could get (it had firebombing number 150 at the weekend). Banning disposable vapes next June isn't exactly going to help. 

The point is that by the time this idiotic law starts to bite, there will be so little of the legal market left that the age at which people can legally buy tobacco will be largely academic. The de facto age at which people will be able to buy tobacco will be zero.

They can't say they haven't been warned. This is on the 415 lemmings who voted for the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. The 47 rebels can sleep soundly.