Last week I voted for the Tobacco and Vapes Bill.
Smoking is our biggest preventable killer so there is no more obvious target for healthcare gains to save lives lost to cancer, heart disease and stroke each year.
Bottom line; smoking is the only product on sale legally that, if you follow the instructions, will very probably kill you.
Governments have acted in the past and we’ve seen smoking rates tumble. It’s time to finish the job and this Bill is part of that.
We talk a lot about the pressures on the NHS, about public satisfaction, systems and staffing.
We can increase the NHS budget and put in a place a properly funded workforce plan. We’ve done both.
We can produce Covid recovery plans – for urgent and emergency care, for primary care and elective waiting lists – and the Government have done them all.
But the truth is – demand continues to outstrip supply and we cannot continue to increase the health budget faster than GDP.
We must think long-term about population preventative health.
The proposed measures seek to create a SmokeFree generation and modelling shows us that if the age of sale were increased by one year every year – as proposed in the Bill – smoking rates among 14 to 30 year olds are likely to be zero by 2050.
I’ve said since the Prime Minister announced these measures in his conference speech last year, the Government has to win the argument as well as the vote.
I believe Ministers have done that but we can’t get away from the fact we will have a situation at some future point where a 50 year old can legally smoke while a 49 year old cannot.
It is rather inelegant but it misses the very point of the “SmokeFree” ambition this Bill has at its’ heart.
It doesn’t criminalise existing smokers and it ensures the purchase of tobacco by those under age will not be criminalised by this legislation - compliance will be the responsibility of the business as is the case with the current law – it makes it illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone who is born on or after New Year’s Day 2009.
That includes my 13-year old son.
By passing this legislation the state is saying to him it’s not OK to start smoking when you reach 18 and I think when we look back we will ask how did we ever say it was.
And by doing so my son never becomes that 49 year old. That’s the point.
We’re told raising the age of sale will fuel the black market and the next generation of smokers will pick up the habit via illicit sales.
A comprehensive anti-smuggling strategy has succeeded in halving the illicit market share from 22-11% and I welcome how the work of Border Force and HMRC has been updated in light of this proposed legislation.
Am I just being hopeful in thinking that will work? No. When the age of sale was raised from 16 to 18 in 2007, the illicit market did not increase.
Of course we must continue to give help to quit advice to current smokers and that needs funding.
I welcome £70 million a year for the next five years into ‘stop smoking services’ and to pay for that Ministers should look again at a tobacco industry levy.
In this debate we often hear about the ‘nanny state’. I have always believed that in a publicly funded healthcare system we have a right – and indeed a responsibility – to act on public health because it becomes everyone’s problem when we don’t.
More on this at stevebrine.com/news
