The British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has defended his plan on the ban of Cigarette smoking and its sales in England, saying the move will be the biggest public health intervention for this generation in the United Kingdom, UK. While speaking to British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, whether he was not trampling on people’s right to chose? Sunak said, there is “no safe level of smoking”.
While taking home his point while talking to the conservative party in England yesterday, the Prime minister opined that the age at which people can buy cigarettes and tobacco in England should rise by one year every year so that eventually no-one can buy them.
Under the plan, a child aged 14 today would never be allowed to buy tobacco, as the age of sale would jacked from 18 every year until it is finally faced out.
Although some opinion moulder explained that it could give rise to black market in cigarette business.
During an interview with Radio 4’s Today programme, some people accused Sunak of playing a double standard on taking measures to ban the future sale of cigarettes, recalled that in June, the Prime Minister pushed back part of the government’s anti-obesity strategy, saying he believed in “people’s right to choose”.
Although the plan was pencilled for this month, plans to ban two-for-one junk food deals have been delayed by the government for another two years.
However, Sunak argued that smoking cigarettes was not the same as eating crisps or a piece of cake because it could not be part of a balanced diet and there was no safe level of smoking.
Sunak statement partly said, “Smoking is unequivocally the single biggest preventable cause of death, disability and illness in our society,” he said.
“Everyone recognises this measure will be the single biggest intervention in public health in a generation.”
Though, he noted that measures to restrict people choices were never easy as nobody would want their children or grand children growing up to be smokers in their lives.
Though idea of gradually phasing out the smoking age was put forward last year by Javed Khan, the former Barnardo’s chief executive, who was asked by ministers to consider new approaches to tackling smoking.
The government at a time, which was led by Boris Johnson, the then prime Minister said such a move was unlikely.
Sunak has decided to throw up the idea as part of his effort of meeting government’s ambition for England to be smoke-free by 2030, defined as less than 5% of the population smoking.
