Smoking Ban Insanity

 

MP's have backed a plan to "encourage" people to give up smoking by making it illegal below a certain age. That law already exists, you might say, because it is in fact a crime to buy tobacco products under the age of eighteen, but the government want to change it so that this age limit rises by one year per calendar year. So next year the minimum smoking age will be nineteen and in 2026 it will be twenty etc. The result will be that anybody born after 2009 will never be able to smoke legally for their entire lives. Obviously this means in a few decades nobody will be able to buy cigarettes and tobacco will effectively become a prohibited drug. Other countries are following suite, such as New Zealand, Portugal and (predictably) Canada. Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68825322. This is a very stupid law, playing devil's advocate, because the government are destroying a massive revenue stream. Smoking materials are very heavily taxed, over 40% in some cases. They generate billions of pounds annually for the exchequer. On an ethical level, they justify it by saying they want to eliminate the unhealthiest everyday practice in the world. About 80,000 people a year die from illnesses caused by smoking. Everybody knows how bad smoking is for our health. Schoolchildren have to watch "love your lungs" videos, every packet of cigarettes has a warning label on it so big it almost covers the whole pack. The problem is that nobody forces us to take up smoking. It is a decision we make as adults; as I said, under-eighteens cannot buy cigarettes. Also don't forget smokers contribute a huge amount of extra tax to the NHS which has to treat smoking-related diseases. It is very typical of the government to try and solve a problem through raw coercion; it's the only language they understand. Recent events demonstrated that very clearly, see: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/02/coronavirus-portal.html. I do not smoke. I never have smoked. This is a decision that I made as an adult, but I feel very different about being commanded not to by the state. This is the government infantilizing us, reducing us to the level of misguided children; again this is very characteristic of their attitude. And prohibition doesn't work anyway. Think of all the drugs that are banned and have been for many years; are they therefore never used by anyone? So even if you do not smoke you should stand in opposition this new law. As Pastor Niemöller could have said: "First they came for the smokers..."
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2014/10/smoking-ban-extension.html.