Law won’t change smokers’ habits

The tobacco industry has a lot to answer for in terms of the lives it has cost and the health of millions of people it has ruined.

Yet we can’t help but welcome the incoming New Zealand government’s decision to jettison harsh anti-smoking laws.

The legislation, unveiled under former prime minister Jacinda Ardern, would have imposed a “generational smoking ban” aimed to prohibit the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 2008.

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The ban was praised by public health experts and anti-smoking advocates, a suite of near-identical measures were recently announced in the United Kingdom.

But the new government has withdrawn the law on the grounds that it would only encourage an underground black market in cigarettes for teenagers.

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While the proposed ban had merit, per se, the bigger worry is that this smacks of social engineering and that, had it gone ahead, might have opened the door to similar laws aimed at moulding freedom of choice.

If people want to act against their own interests, health or otherwise, then let them – as long as they don’t harm or inconvenience others, which is the intent of most current global anti-smoking laws. Educating people is the way you change human behaviour… not by legislation.