Tobacco and Vapes Bill: the stupidest law ever passed in Britain

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which is soon to receive royal assent, is the most empty-headed and illiberal piece of legislation passed in my lifetime. It is a pathetic epitaph for a vacuous political class, a sad fart from the rotting corpse of Blairism, and a new low for the nanny state. Waved through by the political pygmies in the House of Commons and cheered on by the freedom-hating gibbons in the House of Lords, it has given a quick dopamine rush to self-righteous windbags as the British state crumbles around them.

Most people have been only vaguely aware of what the new law says, but the media coverage yesterday alerted millions to the fact that the so-called generational smoking ban has nothing to do with smoking in pubs (which was banned in 2007) or selling cigarettes to children (which was banned in 1908). Instead, it will create an almost surreal two-tier society in which people born after 2008 become permanent children in the eyes of the law.

The consequences are almost too obvious to explain. Everyone has had a good laugh imaging 39-year-olds hanging around outside newsagents asking 40-year-olds to buy them a pack of Mayfair, but the real source of tobacco for this new cohort of second-class citizens will be the black market, although ‘black market’ is almost too dramatic a term for illegal cigarettes being sold more or less openly by bossmen in shops up and down the country. The sale of legal cigarettes has more than halved since 2022. Has the number of smokers more than halved? Reader, it has not. It doesn’t take Miss Marple to work out how the surplus demand is being met.

This is the backdrop against which the Tobacco and Vapes Bill has proceeded through parliament. While politicians have been making unbearably smug speeches about creating a ‘smoke-free generation’ (presumably building on the ‘success’ of the cannabis-free generation), smokers have been casually buying £5 packs of ‘Manchester’ and ‘Top Gun’ from people who don’t care how old their customers are. Further afield, the Australian government has given the world a lesson in what not to do in tobacco control by banning vapes and charging £25 for a pack of fags, thus leading to a full-blown turf war between rival gangs that has led to several murders and the firebombing of more than 80 mostly tobacco shops. This is the ghost of Christmas future for the UK, but neither the media nor the politicians seem to have noticed.

Most tobacco sold in Australia is now illegal, tobacco duty revenues have gone through the floor and, despite having a complete ban on e-cigarettes, youth vaping rates are higher than they are in Britain. We are going in the same direction and the generational sales ban will only accelerate that, but a black-market future for tobacco is already baked in. The generational ban is laughably stupid, but by the time it has any teeth, it will be largely irrelevant.

It is the vapes part of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill that is the real problem. It gives the health secretary, currently Wes Streeting, Henry VIII powers to do whatever he likes with vaping. The government is already consulting on banning vaping everywhere that smoking is banned, despite there being no plausible heath risks from second-hand vapour. It has made it clear that it intends to ban all advertising for vapes and nicotine pouches. It has even suggested that it will ban some or all e-cigarette flavours, a backdoor route to prohibition, which Michael Bloomberg’s army of lobby groups has been campaigning for worldwide. A vape tax that will double or treble the cost of vaping is already due to be introduced in October.

Taken together, this represents the most comprehensive package of pro-smoking policies ever introduced in this country. In the name of preventing minors – who cannot legally buy e-cigarettes – from taking up vaping, the government is putting every obstacle in the way of adults who might otherwise be tempted to use the most effective stop-smoking devices ever invented. It is doing all this while cigarettes with no health warnings on the pack are being sold for a few quid on the high street and has tied a bow on it by passing a law that will give smoking the allure of forbidden fruit for young adults.

In a sane world, everyone involved with this idiotic legislation would be tarred and feathered.

Christopher Snowdon is director of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs and the co-host of Last Orders, spiked’s nanny-state podcast.