Will the Government’s crackdown on tobacco backfire badly? (Image: Getty)
Plans to eradicate smoking in the UK are “unworkable” and will set back progress to save lives, a leading think tank has warned.
The Adam Smith Institute claims that “19 million years of life” could be saved by 2030 if people can use safer alternatives to cigarettes. It says this would save the taxpayer £12.6billion every year.
The think tank claims that banning disposable vapes and a raft of other restrictions will “stall harm reduction” by stopping smokers finding a “quitting aid that works for them”.
The Government aims to phase out smoking by banning the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after January 2009, and disposable vapes will be banned from June.
The ASI says the UK’s progress in bringing down smoking rates is “one of the great public health successes of the past decade”. It states that “as vaping rates increased from 1.7 per cent in 2012 to 7.1 per cent in 2021, smoking rates plummeted from 20 per cent to 14.7 per cent over the same period”.
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But it warns that banning disposable vapes “risks jeopardising this progress” and claims that “29 per cent of disposable e-cigarette users could revert back to smoking if they are banned”.
It adds that “experience from Australia and South Africa shows that prohibition fuels dangerous black markets”.
Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe warned that the Government’s plans to ban smoking were an attack on liberty.
He said: “This is a step towards government control over your personal freedoms. It may start with smoking but it certainly will not stop there.
“This decision must weigh the importance of personal freedoms against health concerns. It is not a decision to be made lightly.”
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Conservative MP Greg Smith MP said: “The Tobacco and Vapes Bill in its current form is putting a huge opportunity to save lives at risk. The illiberalism of the generational smoking ban aside, there is no evidence to suggest it would even work.”
Co-author of the report Maxwell Marlow said: “The evidence is overwhelming – tobacco harm reduction products reduce smoking-rates and save lives. Alongside scrapping the generational ban, the government must urgently reconsider its punitive restrictions on harm reduction products.”
But Hazel Cheeseman, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, was unimpressed by the think tank’s report, saying: “ The public are firmly behind the world’s first generational ban on the sale of tobacco and the government’s commitment to create a smoke-free country. Much of the commentary in this report is a distraction from that goal.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “All tobacco products are harmful to health. There is no safe level of smoking and no other consumer product kills two thirds of its users.
“The health advice is clear – children and people who don’t smoke should never vape.
“The active ingredient in most vapes is nicotine which, when inhaled, is a highly addictive drug. Children are particularly susceptible to the addictive nature of nicotine, more so than adults, as their brains are still developing.
“Our landmark Tobacco and Vapes Bill will put an end to the cycle of addiction and disadvantage by stopping the next generation from getting hooked on nicotine and creating a smoke-free UK.”