Rishi Sunak considers banning cigarettes for next generation
Rishi Sunak considers banning cigarettes for next generation
Exclusive: Sources say law could gradually increase smoking age to ultimately prevent sales to people born after certain year
Rishi Sunak is considering introducing some of the world’s toughest anti-smoking measures that would in effect ban the next generation from ever being able to buy cigarettes, the Guardian has learned.
Whitehall sources said the prime minister was looking at measures similar to those brought in by New Zealand last December. They involved steadily increasing the legal smoking age so tobacco would end up never being sold to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.
All these progressively restrictive laws have been good to me. I'm of the generation who remembers smoking on planes, and my grandmother smoking in her hospital bed.
I was probably at two packs a day in the nineties because it was cheap and acceptable.
These days, a pack will last me a week, and I only ever smoke in my backyard at home, in clothing dedicated to the habit that get washed separately from my other clothes.
Bans and social stigma have forced me into near non-smoking without ever consciously trying.
Do I ever have an occasional night of celebratory drinking where I exceed that trend? You betcha, and I don't feel sorry about it. But I'm glad that I'm not the chain smoking beef jerky with a voice three octaves lower than it should be that my grandparents were.
I still believe that people should be able to enjoy vice and that you shouldn't be completely ostracized from society for not living a perfect organic free range fair trade intoxicant free perfectly vegan whatever else life.
But to phase out tobacco as it has been going, I have found that I haven't minded at all in the long term.
(As to the occasional celebratory night, for completely different reasons, I hardly drink anymore. Also was not a conscious choice or effort. It just lost its attraction for me)
About bloody time. Cigarettes are disgusting and do nothing but immense harm to those who smoke them, and those around them.
Sunak is a tosser, but cigarettes are a no brainer. Sure, old boomers still smoke them, but only the dumbest young people still smoke, and most of them use e-cigs (which are still bad, but nowhere remotely near as bad).
Several of my grandparents died before I could ever know them because of smoking, for example. Fuck smoking. Smoking kills.
prohibition still doesn't work
Good
Legalise weed but ban tobacco!
Just saying.
I remember when they had the same idea around 2014, to ban smoking for anyone born in the UK from 2000 onwards. That would have been easier to enforce.
Lung Cancer for Me but not Thee!
Typical, have your fun then pull up the ladder on the next generation!!!
Ban weed smoking too.
Things like edibles, sure let 'em have it, but we've only just gotten to the point where life doesn't smell like nicotine anymore, we shouldn't be replacing that with everything smelling like weed.
I've been suggesting they do this in the states for a while now.
I smoke. I like smoking, and I don't plan to quit. But it's obvious that most people want smoking to go away. They keep increasing the price of cigarettes, they keep banning smoking in new areas, and every time they'll tell you it's to keep kids from smoking. It's a lie - they want everyone to stop smoking.
So fine. Set a date, and make it illegal for anyone born after that date to smoke. Then leave us smokers alone. If it's as bad for us as you say it is, we'll all die soon anyway.
Will some people born after that date smoke? Sure. But the majority won't. And it'll be a constant annoyance for them that they can't just go buy a carton at the store, which will encourage them to quit. I'd feel sorry for them, but I was told it was bad for me, not that I'd be standing outside in -50° weather puffing as fast as I can because I can't smoke in my hotel room, or that I'd spend more on cigarettes than I do electricity. They at least know they'll never be allowed to smoke.
People saying that's a good decision are simply unqualified to talk about it, they're completely clueless and willingly ignorant, just like sunak and his fking delusional confidence. How is it not obvious that people will refer to black market tobacco? Has history AND WHATS HAPPENING LIKE RIGHT NOW IN GOD DAMN REAL TIME not fking taught you all what banning drugs does? Because of people like you other people will die. That's also YOUR responsibility, not just theirs. It's YOU who affect their decision. And it's not just the fact that it's black market and people will just die, it's also the fact that underground, potentially mafia-like organisations will have MORE POWER. You all LEGIT make me believe in totalitarian governments. I simply can not handle the confident ignorance.
Like imagine a society where 1/4 of the population is forced to quit cold turkey. Y'all are fking insane