Un collega che cerca di far deragliare il divieto di fumo nel Regno Unito ha discusso il disegno di legge con un parente di un’azienda produttrice di tabacco

> Strathcarron’s proposal is to simply raise the legal purchase age from 18 to 21.

That… sounds like a fairly sensible compromise to me? And I can’t say I’ve received a cheque in the post from Philip Morris.

The “central provision of the tobacco and vapes bill”, the generational ban aspect, is an experiment that hasn’t really been tried yet. New Zealand planned to implement it, but scrapped it before it would have come into effect. The Maldives just (I mean, within the past several weeks) passed one of their own, but it also hasn’t come into effect yet. We have no idea how it will play out in the long-term. We don’t know if it will be a rip-roaring success or a total disaster that fuels the black market. We’re signing up to be the Guinea pigs for this policy so other countries can study us, essentially.

There are so many ways I can think of off the top of my head that this policy could go wrong – questions of enforcement, tourists unfamiliar with the law being caught out, retail staff having to deal with angry men in their twenties, grooming of young people by older people on the basis of being ‘plugs’, an increase in dangerous bootleg tobacco, smoking becoming ‘cool’ again because it’s illicit, accusations of racism around enforcement (Shisha bars are popular in the Muslim community). There are valid reasons to be concerned by this bill. The fact this Lord is in contact with tobacco companies feels like playing the man and not the argument.

I’m surprised no one seems to really be paying attention to this bill. It reminds me a lot of the OSA – no one cared right up until it started effecting people.

Just read about this piece of shit and understand that, by virtue of his birth, he gets to vote on laws that you must obey:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Macpherson,_3rd_Baron_Strathcarron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Macpherson,_3rd_Baron_Strathcarron)