Government plans extended smoking ban
February 1st, 2010Plans to halve the number of smokers in the UK over the next decade have been announced by the government.
Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, said he wanted to reduce the percentage of smokers within the population to just 10 per cent. Twenty-one per cent of the population are currently smokers.
The target requires around four million of England’s estimated eight million smokers to quit.
Mr Burnham said he will review the current law to see if it should be strengthened to include areas where smokers have gathered since the 2007 ban.
Measures being considered include removing branding from packets and banning cigarette vending machines, as will happen in Scotland next year.
The government strategy also includes a commitment to try to stop young people taking up smoking by cracking down on illegally imported cheap cigarettes.
Every smoker will be able to get help from the NHS to suit them if they want to give up.
Mr Burnham said: “Most smokers start before they are 18, so we have to discourage children and young people from ever starting.
“Now that we’ve banned advertising and will soon see an end to attractive displays in shops, the only remaining method of advertising tobacco is the packaging. So we will carefully consider whether there is evidence for making tobacco companies use plain packets.
“We will always help people to quit, and smokers should never stop trying. That’s the beauty of the NHS – it’s there to help everyone.
“One day, in the not too distant future, we’ll look back and find it hard to remember why anyone ever smoked in the first place.”
The announcement has been met with a mixed response. Jean King, director of tobacco control at Cancer Research UK, said smoking was still the UK’s largest cause of preventable deaths. “It is vital that work is done to ensure parents know how dangerous it is to smoke in front of their children,” she said. “Breaking the cycle of tobacco addiction and preventing another generation from becoming addicted must remain a priority for us all.”
However Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ lobby group Forest, said further legislation would “further erode our ability to choose how we wish to live our lives”.
The government said each year smoking caused 80,000 deaths and cost the NHS £2.7 billion.
It is obvious even to the blind that this have nothing to do with protecting people from the so called effects o second hand smoke and all to do with harassing a minority group of people “people who smoke”, promoting discrimination, ineqaulity and social engineering. This should not be incorraged, as this kind of attack on freedom of choice and divercity is destroying busnesses “pubs and clubs etc” and communities all over this country, The sooner this Labour party is gone the better.
February 1st, 2010 at 1:43 pmThey would do anything to try and force people to obey their social engineering dictatorship laws, the hope for the majority of free minded, independant people is that may 2010 this bunch of Labour tyrants will be gone and hopefully the next political party would repair the destruction of this Labour government.
February 1st, 2010 at 5:32 pm