More laws based on prejudice and propaganda

Wednesday June 4, 2008

I don’t care much for smoking, says Eamonn Butler, but haven’t we persecuted smokers enough?

I’m a non-smoker, but nevertheless I’m outraged that the UK government plans to ban the display of tobacco products in shops. The pornographic magazines will still be out on display, but cigarettes, cigars and tobacco – even snuff, I guess – will only be for sale ‘under the counter’.

Cigarette vending machines will go too, and the smaller, ten-packs of cigarettes will be outlawed. We’re told that this regulation will ‘send a positive message’ on smoking, will ‘denormalise’ smoking, and stop kids from taking up the habit. 

‘Send a message’? ‘Denormalise’? Are we now using law for propaganda purposes? We don’t outlaw something, but we use the law to tell people we disapprove of it? How corrupt our legislators have become. And will a prohibition on ten-packs actually stop kids taking up the smoking habit by making it more expensive for them? Hardly.

I figure that if they can only buy twenties, they will do just that and then smoke their way right through the packet. It’s like chocolate: buy a bar and you almost always eat the whole thing in one go. If small bars of chocolate were banned, we’d just buy big ones and chomp through those instead.

Encourage

Indeed, there’s some evidence that this is exactly what happens when you try to curb smoking. Saskatchewan introduced regulations quite similar to what’s proposed for the UK. In that province, youth smoking rates actually increased – though they fell in the rest of Canada generally. Perhaps by making cigarettes seem illicit we actually encourage young people to experiment with them more.

Iceland banned shop displays of tobacco in 2001, but smoking rates there don’t seem to have changed much. There are few other examples you can point to for evidence, though, because few countries have been daft enough to bring in this kind of rule.

The government is always harping on about ‘evidence-based policy’ (mostly in an effort to keep out new ideas that challenge the existing state controls), but in this case it is happy to legislate on the basis of prejudice and propaganda, rather than on the basis of evidence. 

Blow

Existing smokers will be fine. They will just ask for their usual brand. That will help the big tobacco producers, because it means there will be less scope for competition from newcomers. Smaller companies, who might want to introduce less harmful tobacco products, won’t get a start, because without advertising and without displays, nobody will get to hear about them.

The folk who will be hit are of course those who run and use local shops. They won’t be able to afford the extra regulation or to have a dedicated counter for cigarettes. Given that the post office business has gone, that will be another blow to them. Even more trade will be siphoned off to the supermarkets, and more rural shops will close.

I don’t smoke and don’t care much for smoking, but haven’t we persecuted smokers enough? I wonder which other of our ‘unhealthy’ pleasures will be driven under the counter next? Sweets? Crisps? Fizzy drinks? When you give political zealots so much power, you never know quite where it will end up.

Dr Eamonn Butler is director of the Adam Smith Institute, one of Britain’s leading think tanks

Link
Adam Smith Institute