As tragic as it might be to lose the ability to subtly flirt by asking someone for a lighter in the smoking section of a club, one would think that the vast majority of English citizens understand the necessity of reducing tobacco consumption. If not specifically in regards to relieving the burden that smoking-related healthcare places on the National Health Service (NHS), then for the sake of the health and well-being of the general population. Seventy percent of England’s population was born after 1964—the year the US Surgeon General released the first report documenting the harmful effects of smoking—and has grown up with knowledge of tobacco’s consequences and the elevated risks of lung cancer posed by smoking. There are very few smokers today who do not know that cigarettes are hurting their bodies. Surely, then, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s proposed ban on smoking in outdoor areas should not have produced such vigorous backlash from the English public.
And yet, a YouGov survey conducted on the same day as the proposed ban’s announcement saw only 35 percent of respondents report strongly supporting the initiative. Likewise, media outlets across the country jumped to disparage Starmer’s proposal as being “just authoritarian,” an unjustifiable encroachment on “personal freedoms,” and an extension of the Labour Party’s “socialist state control instincts.” In one op-ed critique, journalist Stephen Rand argued that the policy “[bans] things rather than finding more nuanced and effective ways to change public opinion.” This statement begs the follow-up question: What is this alternative, “nuanced way”? In spite of the overwhelming evidence of tobacco’s harmful effects, public resistance to smoking bans persists, reflecting a cultural attachment to tobacco that any legislation seeking to truly reduce smoking rates must reckon with.
Public policy attempts to reduce tobacco use have met varying degrees of success. In 2019, Sweden became the only country in Europe to ban smoking in the outdoor seating areas of bars and restaurants. Whilst the nation’s rate of daily smokers then fell from 6.4 percent in 2019 to 5.6 percent in 2022—subsequently making Sweden the front runner to become the European Union’s first “smoke-free” country, defined as having less than 5 percent of the adult population smoking—it would be remiss to imply that this specific piece of legislation is entirely responsible for Sweden’s low smoking rates or that the country represents the pinnacle of anti-tobacco success. In 2019, Sweden already enjoyed the lowest smoking rates in the European Union. Moreover, swathes of the population still consume tobacco orally, turning increasingly from smoking to snus, pouches filled with a tobacco mixture that is absorbed through the gums. Data shows that 14 percent of Sweden’s adult population already used snus daily in 2019, making it the country with the highest oral tobacco use in Europe in the very same year it boasted the lowest smoking rates. Indeed, the use of snus is so deeply ingrained in Swedish society that Sweden is the only country exempt from the EU ban on the product—an exemption that was negotiated as a condition of its very joining of the Union in 1995. Here, therefore, is a question of priorities for England to consider. Snus may be considered less harmful than cigarettes, but its list of side effects is nonetheless unsettling. A solution that hinges on shifting what tobacco products people consume without necessarily reducing tobacco consumption can by no regard be considered the ideal solution. And, given the lack of a comparable history of oral tobacco consumption in England, the UK government should at least be attempting not to concede to a smoking-to-snus pipeline.
Outside of Europe, Mexico passed a ban on smoking in all public spaces just last year, although this has faced similar backlash as Starmer’s policy for being an overly “draconian” measure. Hong Kong’s health secretary suggested “staring” at people violating smoking bans to “create a culture” that discourages such a practice, perhaps exemplifying the more “nuanced” cultural approach Rand calls for. But with 506,100 hospitalizations as a result of smoking in 2019 and 2020, Britain may need a more forceful policy proposal. As Matthew Hilton’s monograph Smoking in British Popular Culture: 1800–2000 outlines, smoking persists in an unusual state of prestige in British culture: “The older celebration of the ‘perfect pleasures’ of the ‘divine lady nicotine’ continue to underlie the significance of tobacco in British popular culture” in the face of scientific and medical advocacy to the contrary.
Perhaps policies that seek to change the significance of tobacco in national culture need to be implemented. This was the approach (almost) taken by New Zealand in 2022, when lawmakers approved a unique ban on the purchase of cigarettes or tobacco products by anyone born after 2008, to remain in effect for their entire lifetime. The idea behind this was to diminish a culture of normalized tobacco consumption in the younger generations without restricting any of the current smoking population’s access to the product, thereby lessening public backlash. Polling indicated that 78 percent of the population supported a ban to create a tobacco-free generation, and, after its approval, only one political party in the nation actively campaigned on repealing it—New Zealand First, which subsequently garnered a mere 6 percent of the vote. In addition, according to a 2023 study, an impressive 79 percent of young New Zealanders aged 16 to 29 years old supported the ban—although it is worth noting that everyone in this group was born before the cutoff year and thus would not be directly affected by the legislation they were in support of.
The New Zealand legislation was ultimately scrapped by the new government a year later in a move to retain revenue from shops selling tobacco that help pay for tax cuts. However, former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government took up this exact idea. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill 2024—an identical law but for those born after 2009—was first introduced by Sunak in April 2024 and retains support from current Prime Minister Starmer. If passed into law, anyone aged 15 or younger as of 2024 will never be able to legally buy tobacco products in the United Kingdom, dramatically disincentivizing that population from picking up the habit out of a combination of illegality and impracticality. The policy exemplifies the balancing of cultural nuance with forceful and assertive action. Moreover, it has the support of 69 percent of adults in Great Britain, a higher percentage than those in support of the outdoor smoking ban. This law also gives the hospitality industry more time to adapt to a change in smoking norms: Ideally, it would result in a drastic reduction in smoking outside pubs in 10 or so years—with the youngest generation of drinkers no longer able to buy cigarettes—but it does not immediately threaten to “kill” the business of current establishments.
This formula of tobacco legislation is uniquely feasible because the policy’s targeted demographic is not of voting or polling age. They are 15-year-olds whose opinions on tobacco consumption are not exactly taken seriously even by their parents, let alone by their government. Sure, there is the risk of a new black market for cigarettes emerging in the future, but given the virtually unquantifiable nature of both present and hypothetical illicit economies, this risk can only be tackled if and as it arises. It may be a slower solution to Starmer’s NHS woes, but given its cross-party support and success in the polls, the New Zealand-inspired bill may be the best of the options on the table if he’s looking for relative popularity alongside real cultural change.