The Tobacco and Vapes Bill is a masterclass in self-defeat

Jack Rankin is not a man given to understatement. The Conservative MP for Windsor, who sat through the Tobacco and Vapes Bill’s interminable committee stage, rose in the Commons recently to deliver a verdict on the legislation that might charitably be described as a controlled demolition. The Bill, he told the House, is “driven more by puritan ideology than by evidence or practicality.” It creates “two tiers of adults.” It will “turbocharge an already thriving black market.” And, in a line that deserves to become a bumper sticker: “Labour hates fun.”

He is, on every count, correct. But the real tragedy of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is not that the Government is being aggressively authoritarian in its approach to civil liberties: that much was priced in the moment Keir Starmer inherited Rishi Sunak’s generational smoking ban and decided to gold-plate it. Instead, the tragedy is that the Bill will fail on its own terms. It will not create a smoke-free generation, nor improve public health outcomes. What it will do is enrich criminal gangs, destroy high street businesses, and punish the very people it claims to help.

Let’s start with the headline policy: the generational ban, which makes it illegal to sell tobacco to anyone born after 1 January 2009. Rankin pointed out in his speech that smoking rates have already plummeted from 30 per cent in the early 2000s to 10.4 per cent today, which is a decline driven overwhelmingly by market innovation, not state coercion. Vapes, nicotine pouches, and heated tobacco products have given smokers something the NHS stop-smoking service never could: a genuine alternative that people actually want to use. 

As research from the Adam Smith Institute has shown, the 18-to-24 age group is already on track to reach “smoke-free” status (defined as 5 per cent prevalence or below) by 2027 without any ban at all. The legislation is, in the most literal sense, unnecessary. Yet the Government presses on, because this was never really about data: the generational ban is a monument to the political class’s conviction that it knows better than you what you should put in your body. Never mind that, as Rankin acidly observed, he has “never met a smoking adult who did not know that smoking was bad for them.” Never mind that 60 per cent of smokers already want to quit. The state must act, because the state always must act.

The consequences of this compulsion are grimly predictable. The Government’s own impact assessment projects that the generational ban will cause 7,680 store closures, cost 70,000 jobs, and inflict £6.52 billion in losses on retailers. Rankin recited these figures in the chamber and nobody on the Government benches disputed them. They simply did not care: giving “Big Tobacco” a black eye is the end goal.

Meanwhile, the black market is booming. KPMG data shows that one in four cigarettes consumed in Britain is now illicit (roughly two billion cigarettes a year) flowing through networks that fund organised crime and, in some cases, terrorism. A pack of illicit cigarettes costs as little as £3.50, against £16.75 at retail. Tobacco duty receipts have fallen by around 10%, or £414 million in just six months, and by nearly 30 per cent over the past decade, far outstripping the decline in actual smoking rates. Duty-paid cigarette sales have collapsed by 45 per cent in three years, from 23.6 billion sticks in 2021 to 13.2 billion in 2024. The Treasury is haemorrhaging revenue not because fewer people are smoking, but because fewer people are buying legal cigarettes.

Rankin saw this first-hand. During a mystery shopping exercise in Windsor and Sunninghill, he witnessed illicit tobacco being sold openly in three shops. On the high street in Windsor alone, eight dodgy vape shops have sprung up, which are outlets that are plainly not responding to organic consumer demand, raising obvious questions about fraud and money laundering. This is the reality the Tobacco and Vapes Bill will accelerate. As Australia’s experiment with draconian tobacco regulation has demonstrated, prohibition does not eliminate demand, but redirects it into the hands of criminals.

But perhaps the cruellest irony of the Bill is what it does to the products that actually work. The Government knows (because its own actively NHS prescribes them) that vapes are an effective quitting aid. Vaping is at least 95 per cent safer than smoking. Lords amendment 72, which protects the advertisement of vapes as part of a public health campaign, is an implicit admission of this fact. And yet the same legislation introduces punitive restrictions on vape flavours, advertising, and availability that will suppress their uptake among the very adult smokers who need them most.

If every current smoker in Britain switched to tobacco harm reduction products, the cumulative gain would be 19 million years of additional life

The Adam Smith Institute’s paper 19 Million Years of Life, which I co-authored with Mark Oates, calculated that if every current smoker in Britain switched to tobacco harm reduction products, the cumulative gain would be 19 million years of additional life. Using Action on Smoking and Health’s own methodology, smoking currently costs the UK taxpayer £21.8 billion a year. Achieving smoke-free status through harm reduction, rather than prohibition, would reduce that burden by between £9.2 billion and £12.6 billion annually. Bafflingly, the Government is actively working against themselves — and taxpayers.

The data from ASH itself tells the story of displacement. Among 11-to-17-year-olds, 4.2 per cent vape only, while 2.6 per cent smoke only. Vaping has not acted as a “gateway” to tobacco. A 2022 cross-sectional survey confirmed that there is no evidence of vaping leading to cigarette uptake. Yet the ban on disposable vapes, enacted alongside this Bill, is forecast to push 29 per cent of current vapers back onto cigarettes. The Government is, in effect, nudging people towards the more dangerous product.

The public, for what it is worth, can see through it. Polling commissioned by the Adam Smith Institute from Merlin Strategy found that 56 per cent of Britons say life has become less fun under Labour — a figure that rises to 79 per cent among Reform voters and, more damningly, includes 36 per cent of Labour’s own supporters. A staggering 97 per cent of voters said the generational smoking ban should not be a priority. Just three per cent of respondents thought the Government was not doing enough on nanny-state issues. The public wants action on the cost of living and the NHS, not a war on nicotine.

Rankin made the case for a sensible alternative: Lord Murray of Blidworth’s amendment, backed by hundreds of retailers, which would have replaced the generational ban with a minimum purchase age of 21. It would have been more enforceable, less costly, and less constitutionally absurd than a system that will eventually require a 40-year-old to prove she was born before 2009 in order to buy a packet of Benson & Hedges. Naturally, it was rejected. So too were Lord Sharpe’s amendments to protect beer gardens from smoke-free designation and allow the advertising of non-tobacco products in age-gated venues. Control by the state is the aim here, not the laudable goals of improving public health.

Rankin ended his speech on a note of qualified optimism, welcoming Lords amendment 80, which requires a review of the Bill within four to seven years of implementation. He predicted the review will vindicate his concerns — and that the Bill will not survive a change of government.

He is probably right on both counts. The question is how much damage will be done in the interim — how many corner shops will close, how many smokers will be driven to the black market, how many vapers will be nudged back onto cigarettes, and how many billions of pounds in tax revenue will vanish into the pockets of smugglers. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill is not a public health measure. It is a masterclass in self-defeat: a piece of legislation that will make smoking more dangerous, more criminal, and more expensive for everyone. Except, of course, criminals.