It is an indictment of the intellectual vacuum in British politics that when a prime minister is looking for a legacy, they so often decide to give smokers another kicking. Tony Blair introduced a smoking ban to take our minds off Iraq, leaving office four days before it came into force in case things turned ugly. Theresa May set her successors the target of going ‘smoke-free’ by 2030 at the fag end of her time in Downing Street.
For Rishi Sunak, way behind in the polls and failing to meet most of his five targets, a generational ban on tobacco sales offers a place in the history books. Jacinda Ardern had the same idea in New Zealand, but the new centre-right government has decided to repeal her prohibitionist policies (which included taking nicotine out of cigarettes). So now Mr Sunak stands alone, carrying the torch of the New Zealand Labour party.
Prohibition has a bad name for a good reason and you don’t need to go back to 1920s America for the evidence
The plan is to ban anyone born after 2008 from ever buying any tobacco product, including cigars, pipe tobacco, heated tobacco, shisha and snuff.
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