The UK has announced a mammoth effort to combat tobacco use with its The Tobacco and Vape Bill including the eye-catching generational tobacco ban, which will prevent anyone born after 2009 from ever being able to purchase harmful combustible tobacco products. But with safer nicotine products such as heated tobacco products and snus included in this ban, will tobacco harm reduction efforts be caught in the crossfire? And can this ban even be realistically enforced? Martin Cullip joins us to discuss the generational ban on tobacco products in the UK and many more proposed regulations announced in Part One of our UK special on GFN TV!
Chapters:
0:00 - Coming up on today's programme 1:10 - UK generational ban on smoking EXPLAINED 2:55 - What was the response in the House of Commons? 3:10 - How will nicotine product advertising be impacted? 4:18 - Consumers to have their say on flavour ban 5:30 - Will the licensing scheme effectively combat youth vaping?Transcription:
00:04
Joanna Junak: Hello and welcome. I'm Joanna Junak and this is GFN News on GFN.TV. The Tobacco and Vape Bill is a regulation introduced by the UK government as a part of its efforts to reduce smoking and vaping in society, particularly aiming to protect children and young people from addiction. What are the primary concerns and benefits of the bill? Joining us today to summarize the tobacco and vape bill is Martin Kalab, International Fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance Consumer Center, to whom we spoke at the end of last year, just after the bill's second reading in the House of Commons. This is part one of our interview with Martin. Part two will air on Tuesday. Hello Martin, thank you for joining us today. First, could you please explain what the generational ban on smoking in the new tobacco and vapes bill entails?
01:23
Martin Cullip: Well, the generational age ban part of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill basically says that anyone who is born after the 1st of January 2009 will never legally be allowed to buy tobacco products. And by that, they mean cigarettes, cigars, but also sadly include heated tobacco, snus, smokeless tobacco, and even things like... papers like Rizla papers or papers for wrapping cigarettes up. So it's quite draconian. And this is meant to go into effect on the start of January 2027. So the effects won't happen for a number of years yet. um it brought up during the debate yesterday for the second reading it brought up some people opposing this principle on the measure on the principle of um of freedom of choice and saying why should um a government be able to say that someone of say 23 can buy cigarettes and someone who's 22 can't. But that was battered away by a lot of politicians by saying, well, there's no liberty in addiction, they said. This was the line they kept pumping, which seems strange to me because a whole host of these MPs were standing up to say about how they used to smoke and how bad it was when they used to smoke, but they've given up now. So if there's no liberty in addiction, and addiction is that... terrible, how come so many of them quit smoking? Which made me laugh.
02:55
SPEAKER_01: In respect of vaping, it's a very, in fact, totally unregulated sector. And for many young people, I fear it is a gateway to smoking.
03:11
Joanna Junak: And what advertising restrictions on vaping products can be expected?
03:17
Martin Cullip: All advertising is banned. It's already banned for cigarettes, but this is for vapes, nicotine pouches, anything containing nicotine, or even non-nicotine vapes are included. You can't advertise them. At the moment, they're advertised on billboards and buses under TPD regulations, which says that you can advertise as long as it doesn't cross borders, but that's now gone, which is problematic for those of us in favour of harm reduction, because how can smokers find out about these products if you can't see them anywhere they don't know they exist and one thing that i was curious about is what's going to happen about advertising because it's also a sponsorship of sport what's going to happen about things like formula one where velo is is shown on some formula one cars and there's only one grand prix in the uk so presumably that causes a problem for the prohibitionists in the fact that these cars will still be seen on tv when the the races in another country. So we'll have to see how that pans out.
04:19
Joanna Junak: And what about the vape liquid flavors? Which ones will be banned?
04:24
Martin Cullip: We're not absolutely sure because that's got to go through a further consultation. One thing to take from this, that's a record based bill, a lot of the vaping restrictions they've said they'll consult on, which doesn't really mean they'll listen to anyone, of course, because that never seems to work out that way. But they have said they will consult on these these things so so we'll have a chance to have our say about how bad they are but the the um it keeps cropping up they say they might restrict these um products in fact uh andrew gwynn who's the public health minister said they're looking at banning all flavors except tobacco menthol and a number of selected fruits he said so i suppose it's still better than other countries but um we know very well that the the variety of fruits is um variety of flavors is vital to vaping and helping people switch. So it's going to reduce the opportunity or reduce the attractiveness and the appeal in that respect. But we'll have to see how that works out. And again, consultation, we can have our say and hopefully emphasize how important the flavors are.
05:31
Joanna Junak: Geographically, which parts of the United Kingdom will the proposed bill apply to? And what new requirements will shops face?
05:40
Martin Cullip: Well, I'm glad you mentioned the Devolved Nations, because this is legislation they're designing, which will work in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. So they're proposing a licensing scheme. Scotland has had a licensing scheme for tobacco and vapes for a while, which has been a free license. But it's something that can be actionable. You know, if someone is selling things to kids, you can take their license away. So I don't think that's a bad idea. And there's an argument to say, and it was mentioned in the comments yesterday, that people are surprised that people who sell tobacco don't have to have a licence currently, where you do have to have a licence for selling alcohol. So these licence restrictions have come in. I think overall it's a good measure, but the problem is they should have done this first. They're talking about this is all to stop kids getting hold of tobacco and vapes. Well, the first thing they should have done was try the licensing requirements first, see if that works, and then go on to everything else. But they've just thrown everything at a very minor problem, really, in my opinion, and this is the result. But the licensing restrictions are fairly... uh fairly sensible it might give some cost to smaller businesses but i think in all i think industry welcomes these these proposals