Sunak proposes raising smoking age every year to create 'smoke-free' generation
Sunak proposes raising smoking age every year to create 'smoke-free' generation
Rishi Sunak has proposed raising the smoking age every year in a move welcomed by health charities but criticised by those in the tobacco industry.
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I think this is deeply illiberal. There are some cases where bans make sense like the XXL Bully dog ban that has been mooted. But I don't think the government should be able to decide what an adult puts in their own body.
My dad was an oncologist for years and he said that one of the reasons we're having trouble in the NHS is that people have stopped smoking. Unfortunately if you are stricken with lung cancer then your prognosis is not good - and while this is a tragedy - you potentially could end up costing much more money in terms of social care and hospital visits if you carry on to live to a later age but get stricken with a more complex degenerative disease.
This is disappointing. Honestly I has found Sunak to be a relief on the whole after our previous few Prime Ministers, probably on par with Therasa May. In my opinion this is a cynical attempt to steal a policy that Labour's Wes Streeting was going to announce soon in order to take the wind out of his sails.
So the NHS would be better off if more people just died and didn't waste your dad's time. Nice.
He's retired now but one of the arguments being put forward for the ban is that it will help the NHS. Purely actuarially, his anecdotal experience was that people living longer has been one of the biggest factors in the budget being squeezed over the years. Interestingly the other huge money sink was litigation by patients but that's a separate thing to what we're discussing.
Edit: Not that it should be relevant but he also smoked for the majority of his career as a doctor. The observation is more about how wider behaviour of the population affected their budgets.
But I don't think the government should be able to decide what an adult puts in their own body.
What if nicotine is legal, and only the smoking is illegal?
I think that is what's being proposed by the policy. I suppose I have two objections to that: Firstly, I think people should be able to make bad choices provided they aren't harming others. Secondly, it could be counterproductive creating an artifical scarcity for younger generations; like it could end up making smoking cool again like cannabis (arguably) is.
Second hand smoke is very harmful.