Plans to stop young people born since 2009 ever smoking are being debated and will be voted on later.
Rishi Sunak’s bill aims to create the UK’s first smoke-free generation in a major public health intervention.
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill would ensure anyone turning 15 from this year would be banned from buying cigarettes, and also aims to make vapes less appealing to children.
A number of Tory MPs have told the BBC they won’t back the bill.
The BBC understands that Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch is considering voting against the plans.
Same. Normally I’d say “keep it legal” but smoking has significant second-hand effects, unlike something like motorcycle helmets for example (which I do not think should be legally mandated). I’m very torn on this one.
If you ride without a helmet, you’re too dumb to get a licence
I agree that it’s incredibly stupid, but if being stupid were illegal, we’d have an awful lot of people in prison.
I find the second hand effects argument a difficult one to swallow when we deal with car pollution, industrial waste, microplastics, and so much more on a minute to minute basis. Anyone who lives in a city has essentially no reasonable expectation of overly clean air.
Public spaces are just that—public—and there should not be an expectation of being insulated from every harmful output by your fellow citizens, within reason. I’d take the errant cigarette waft over a bus station fart any day.
I’d support banning or heavily penalizing those things too, FWIW.
I don’t see any benefits to smoking but we can say that about many things. I’d like to live in a smoke free world but once we go down the path, we run into the issue where to start banning everything on health concerns.
I like being able to go out to eat and it be smoke free but I wish the market had decided that.
Not really. Soda for example doesn’t harm others, regardless of how much you drink. Smoking is different.
If you’re smoking by yourself, you are not impacting anyone. In the United States, it’s banned indoors almost everywhere. The main impact is to the user.
Lots of smokers do so around their kids. How do you police that?
I dunno.
It’s illegal to jack off in front of your kids.
Why don’t we make it illegal to smoke in the same house as them, too?
Both seem equally-difficult to police.
Excellent analogy - you’re right.
Then you have the “parents” who purposely blow smoke in their baby’s face so the baby develops asthma and they can get government money for the baby from disability.
Ah yes the best way to make money: have kids.
You’re delusional man, me too thanks.
The best way to get free money from the government, that is.