“Catch me once, silly you; catch me twice, silly me!” It’s a philosophy many of us hold dear, but not governments – it seems they never learn.
We have recently suffered another “No Smoking Day”, and a promise of even further impositions on law-abiding people’s freedoms. Supermarkets first, and later shops, will have to hide their cigarettes and tobacco products, selling them from “under the counter”, and if some “do-gooders” get their way, the items will soon only be available in plain packets. Can you think of anything more exciting and tempting for a child who wants to smoke than such an adventurous undercover operation? The mind boggles!
Has no government learned anything from America’s alcohol prohibition days? They were very bad times, and we may soon see the likes of them re-enacted here in the UK. From what in 2002 was little more than some holidaymakers smuggling a few extra packets of fags into the country, we have in less than ten years progressed to a global underground market run by criminals and gangs of thugs, and it is worth billions! Today half of all tobacco products sold in the UK are thought to be be illegal, and far more detrimental to health than the genuine products. This is progress?
The government makes £11 billion in VAT and duty to the Treasury each year on tobacco sales. It might be £22 billion were it not for the massive illegal operations in every town and city in the land. Equate all that tax with what the NHS spends on treating smokers, and you will immediately discover just who has been supporting this much-loved institution the most. Penalising smokers, and sending their habit underground, is hurting a great deal more than just the smokers. The ordinary taxpayer, smoker or not, now has to find all that missing revenue – and also pay the billions of pounds being spent on the war against illegal tobacco imports.
Studies put the cost of smoking to the NHS at between £1.4 billion and £1.7 billion in 1991, and though an embarrassed NHS (conveniently?) reassessed their figures upwards in 2009 (to £5.1 billion), everyone can plainly see the truth of the matter. The latest figures include untold amounts being spent on advertising (read: propaganda). The proportion of NHS money spent on smoking is around five percent of its budget – and it has remained similar to that since the early 1990s. However, even in these austere times, soon (more) millions of pounds will need to be spent (wasted!) by struggling businesses in order to conform to the latest stupid regulations. It is madness!
Already most underage sales made are for the illegal tobacco. It’s half the price, for goodness sake – and often it is the parents who buy it for the kids! Few youngsters are paying the exorbitant rates of tax in licenced shops for their pleasure like some of us still do, and I wonder: how much longer will it be before the government drives ALL tobacco sales underground, and the criminal gangs are fighting in our streets like they do for patches on which to sell their recreational drugs?
Just as with recreational drugs, underage tobacco sales were not a big problem before the government intervened, and on the excuse of looking after our health piled on the restrictions and (in the case of tobacco) punitive taxes. The number of smokers was already falling dramatically. Eighty-two percent of the population smoked in1948. By 1974 it was down to forty-five percent, and at the turn of the century it had fallen to less than thirty percent, making it inexplicable why two years later the first curbing regulations came in: the ban on advertising. What really went on here? Today twenty-one percent still smoke, suggesting the unjust taxes and restrictions have seen many smokers dig their heels in, or made the habit far more attractive to a whole new generation that knows how to buy cheaper. It appears the countless millions of pounds spent every year now on propaganda to stop smoking are mostly wasted, and the NHS could better use the money in other ways – like on new treatments and drugs, for example!
No government or institution has ever stopped the people doing what they want to do; the public will always find a way. When they find that way is far cheaper for them, then the government impositions become counterproductive. The banning of alcohol, prostitution, and recreational drugs, has never stopped them being enjoyed by those who wanted to savour them, but it has bred an enormous criminal subculture, produced social disorder with rising crime figures, and brought death and destruction to the streets.
Isn’t it about time we elected politicians with at least two brain cells, in the hope they might one day find each other and reproduce?
Smoking is not a healthy pastime, the information is out there, but when these ridiculous regulations are making it cheaper for kids to start, and turning their purchases into an exciting adventure, then they are not helping them, or anybody. We can never win a war against illegal tobacco imports, like we can never win against illegal drugs. Research has shown that, so lucrative is the market, the criminals can afford to lose up to nine container-loads of tobacco products out of every ten, and still make a profit. It is thought, even after all the extra money given to them, Customs & Excise apprehend less than one in ten. Already it is a mountain we cannot climb, and it is growing in height every day.
I believe drastically slashing the amount of revenue collected on tobacco, and treating the product as nothing exceptional, would see that mountain disappear within months, and probably put just as much money in the government’s coffers, if not more. Once it was all out in the open again, we would likely see the number of smokers return to falling dramatically. Us oldens with a lifetime of addiction are dying off, and the kids already know smoking isn’t cool. Youngsters like to protest and do things to annoy us, it comes with the territory, so why do we continue to encourage them?
Wake up, David Cameron! Count those brain cells – and if you’re short, there’s plenty of us who would give you a few! We expected many of the unnecessary chains we bear to be loosened when you came to power, not tightened. I know I’ve written it many times, but ony jokingly: does common sense really go out the door the minute one gets elected?
