This week, the government outlined their plans to crackdown on tobacco and vapes in greater detail.
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During the campaign for plain packaging a decade ago, anti-smoking campaigners cited the statistic that 570 children start smoking every day. “With such a large number of youngsters starting to smoke every year”, said a spokesperson for Cancer Research UK in 2013, “urgent action is needed”.
Last week saw the first reading of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill in the House of Commons. This legislation will ban anyone born after 2008 from ever legally buying tobacco products and the anti-smoking lobby is promoting it with a new statistic: every day 350 young adults aged between 18 and 25 start smoking regularly.
The shift in rhetoric from ‘think of the children’ to 'think of the adults' reflects the fact that most people who try smoking these days do so when they are aged 18 or over. When you consider how few teenagers wait until they are 18 to buy alcohol or watch an 18-certificate film, this is a remarkable achievement, but how is it a justification for banning everyone born before a certain year from ever having that choice?
Underage smoking has often been used as an excuse to introduce policies that make life harder for adults, but even the strident anti-smoking activists at Action on Smoking and Health have always said that adults should be free to buy tobacco. That changed almost overnight when Rishi Sunak got behind the generational ban. The new argument is that adults should be banned from buying tobacco because most people who start smoking are adults.
This is unadulterated paternalism with the full force of the state behind it. It no longer matters whether you are over 18 and deemed to be a legally competent adult in every other respect because another group of adults has decided that it knows best. The ‘think of the children’ fig leaf has been discarded and the implications for consumers of other products that are currently legal are chilling. The velvet glove has been replaced by the iron fist. This is a fundamental shift in how the government approaches ‘public health’ issues and it deserves a more sober and considered national conversation than it has had so far.
Christopher Snowdon
IEA Head of Lifestyle Economics
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No, Sunak’s smoking ban does not command the overwhelming support of Conservative voters ([link removed])
Christopher Snowdon, ConservativeHome ([link removed])
Begging the question… Polling showing widespread support for the generational tobacco ban is not all it may seem.
Could a generational smoking ban help the UK kick the habit forever? ([link removed])
IEA research ([link removed]) quoted in The Guardian ([link removed])
Discriminatory and Infantilising… “[The IEA paper] argued that “the ban infantilises one cohort of adults, discriminates on the basis of age and raises issues of intergenerational unfairness”.
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Alcohol, Tobacco, and Prohibition | The Swift Half with Snowdon ([link removed])
Christopher Snowdon interviews Professor Dan Malleck, IEA YouTube ([link removed])
Same playbook… Whether it’s alcohol, tobacco, or junk food, the ideas behind prohibition pushes are usually the same.
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** Failure to cut interest rates is ‘disappointing,’ says IEA economics expert ([link removed])
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Early this week, the Office for National Statistics released new inflation data showing a slowing to a two-and-a-half-year low in February. IEA Economics Fellow Julian Jessop responded that ([link removed]) the data demonstrate “the urgent need for the Bank of England to begin cutting rates.”
But on Thursday, the Monetary Policy Committee chose to hold rates at 5.25%. The risk remains ([link removed]) that having been too slow to respond to inflation, they may be too slow to respond to its easing.
Prospect of interest rate cuts pushes FTSE 100 to 11-month high ([link removed])
Julian Jessop, The Times (Print) ([link removed]) , The Daily Mail (Print) ([link removed]) , Guido Fawkes ([link removed]) , The Daily Telegraph ([link removed]) , The Guardian ([link removed]) , Yahoo! ([link removed]) & AOL
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Shift in tone… While they didn’t cut interest rates, the MPC did send signals that rates will go down in the summer.
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Bank Stuck Behind the Curve ([link removed])
Julian Jessop, talkTV ([link removed])
Slow on the uptake… The Bank of England was too slow to tighten monetary policy post-Covid and now risks being too slow to loosen it.
IEA Latest.
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Let’s be honest, Labour’s ‘securonomics’ will make the UK economy less secure ([link removed])
Director of Public Policy and Communications Matthew Lesh, City AM ([link removed])
New strategy, old problems… Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves is right to want to boost economic growth, but industrial policy risks backfiring by subsidising uncompetitive businesses.
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Comparing Putin to Stalin misunderstands Russia ([link removed])
Managing Editor Daniel Freeman, CapX ([link removed])
Killer confusion… Beyond the superficial similarities, Putin is not the new Stalin. Forgetting this leads us to misunderstand the threat we face.
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Is another ‘Junk Food’ Crackdown Inbound? ([link removed])
Communications Officer & Linda Whetstone Scholar Reem Ibrahim, Sky News ([link removed])
Who decides?… A private company’s decision about what to sell and a customer’s decision about what to buy is none of the state’s business.
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Behind the Curtain: Should AI be more Transparent? | IEA Podcast ([link removed])
Matthew Lesh interviews Alliance Manchester Business School Lecturer Carlo Cordasco, IEA YouTube ([link removed])
Walking the tightrope… How can we mitigate the risks of artificial intelligence without undermining its enormous potential to help make us wealthier?
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Football Regulator: ‘another expensive and unaccountable Quango’ ([link removed])
Editorial and Research Fellow Len Shackleton
Too much of a good thing… Football is one of England’s few world-leading industries. The last thing it needs is government meddling.
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Heat Pump Subsidies Demonstrate Net Zero Folly ([link removed])
Energy Analyst Andy Mayer, GB News ([link removed])
Environmental calculation problems… Heat pump subsidies starkly demonstrate why state central planning is not the best way to transition away from fossil fuels.
IEA Insider.
** Level-Up 2024 ([link removed])
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The Objective Standard Institute is hosting its annual Level-Up conference in Atlanta, Georgia in June. Level-Up is an opportunity to participate in a wide range of lectures and discussions including world-class speakers such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Alex O'Connor, Max Lugavere, and many others.
If you’re 18 to 29, you can apply for an Active-Mind Scholarship ([link removed]) worth up to $1,490. Find out more and apply here ([link removed]) .
** Self-esteem: The Key to a Free Society
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At our latest event on Thursday, Reem Ibrahim and Objective Standard Institute Fellow Kiyah Willis discussed why self-esteem and respect for life are key to creating a freer society in the era of identity politics and nanny statism.
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