Britain, the once-proud land that made “knife control” a thing and seized children from parents for a lack of fork control (the kids were fat), is at it again. This time, King Charles III has confirmed, the plan is to prohibit anyone born in 2009 or later from ever buying tobacco. Don’t believe the fearmongers who say this portends the ultimate removal of all freedoms, however: You’ll still be able to recommend a “sex change” for the kids or kill one in the womb.
King Charles touted the anti-tobacco measure Tuesday while speaking to Parliament for the first time. Per Scripps News:
“My government will introduce legislation to create a smoke-free generation by restricting the sale of tobacco so that children currently aged 14 or younger can never be sold cigarettes, and restricting the sale and marketing of e-cigarettes to children,” Charles said.
The legislation would raise the legal age that people can buy tobacco products by one year every year starting in 2027, meaning anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2009, will never be able to legally buy cigarettes. The proposal was initially announced by [Prime Minister Rishi] Sunak at the 2023 Conservative Party Conference in October, when he also pledged to crack down on the sale of vape products.
“Four in five smokers have started by the time they’re 20,” Sunak said. “Later, the vast majority try to quit. But many fail because they’re addicted and they wish they had never taken up the habit in the first place. Now if we could break that cycle, if we could stop the start, then we would be on our way to ending the biggest cause of preventable death and disease in our country.”
(Actually, the biggest cause of preventable death and disease is existence.)
So this is no longer the Britannia that once ruled the waves with a navy built on rum and the lash. And what enables the government to get around the group-discrimination problem — increasing the smoking age for “everyone” one year annually beginning in 2027 — raises the prospect that 80-year-old granny can experience the joy of being carded in 2088. “Oh, I’m sorry, madam; ‘smoker’s face’ phenomenon aside, you don’t look a day over 79….”
The MSN.com reader comments associated with the above article make clear that Sunak’s proposal does have support. For example, “Not a Charles fan,” Annette S wrote, “but if ever he was right, banning smoking for folks born after 2009 could be it. …[H]ow can that not be a good thing?”
And, certainly, the proposal accords with the phenomenon whereby a people can tyrannize itself. As I wrote in 2010, remember “that most any behavior or activity — tanning, fishing, dodgeball, hunting, etc. — is only practiced by a minority of the population. Thus, make the rounds demonizing behaviors, and you can eliminate freedom after freedom simply by rallying a different majority in each case.”
Smoking certainly qualifies, too. Only 13 percent of adult Britons now smoke, according to Scripps, and virtually no one among those born 2009 or later does.
This said, the proposal does have opponents. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss is among them, saying this week that “it’s time for Conservatives to ‘stop banning things,’” Scripps relates.
For the record, I don’t smoke, so I’ve no personal vested interest in tobacco’s legality. But where does the mentality underlying this end? Sunak claimed that his proposal would “cut cancer deaths by a quarter” and “significantly reduce long-term pressure” on Britain’s socialized medicine system. Putting aside that the latter is a problem not of economic freedom but of socialism — it arises when you collectivize accountability and through taxation make people responsible for others’ life decisions — note that there are many things that might reduce this “long-term pressure.”
Should people be allowed to eat generous amounts of saturated fat, sugar, or salt? Should junk food be outlawed? You don’t need it, after all. Should we prohibit hang gliding, high-altitude mountain climbing, cave diving, and edge walking, all among the world’s most dangerous recreational activities? Again, these aren’t necessities.
Of course, we’ve already seen efforts to ban foods (e.g., “Big Gulp” sodas), and, as mentioned, British authorities have seized overweight children from parents. In reality, though, whether Sunak’s proposal would reduce healthcare costs is questionable. Note that an inordinate amount of healthcare resources are used for end-of-life-care for the elderly. And the case has been made that since people living very unhealthful lifestyles often die younger (e.g., of a heart attack), they’re less likely to need such care and may actually save the system money.
As for preventing premature death, the same case has been made for America’s Prohibition: that it actually saved many thousands of lives. Yet this calculation fails to consider the thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of people who died from drinking toxic black-market alcohol — sold by individuals unrestrained by regulations or concern over ruining a brand name. Perhaps this problem wouldn’t arise with black-market tobacco, but it’s worth considering.
This said, isn’t the deeper issue that the king and Sunak just care so much about people? Well, realize that their government is just one of many that forced certain workers to take an experimental “vaccine” and visited destructive lockdowns on everyone.
The real deeper issue is that this health obsession reflects the Cult of the Body. Under its logic, it’s not only okay but positive to give kids “sex change” treatments or initiate them into perversion masquerading as “sex education,” and you can abort them in the womb. But the idea that John, who’s now Joanna in a dress, might stick a cigarette in his mouth is unthinkable.
Speaking of this cult, its inherent vanity brings to mind that a better method than law for discouraging smoking might be persuasion. Sunak’s government could, for example, start with PSAs presenting the below Seinfeld segment. (It’s hilarious and worth watching. But if you want to cut to the chase, fast-forward to 1:29.)
Anyway, all this reminds me of how G.K. Chesterton predicted about a century ago that a time would come when smoking a cigar would be seen as more offensive than abortion. Well, here we are.
