British
Medical Association hails vote as step towards achieving goal of a tobacco-free
society by 2035, but critics call it 'illiberal'
theguardian.com,
Haroon Siddique, Tuesday 24 June 2014
Doctors have voted overwhelmingly to push for a permanent ban on the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 2000
The proposer of the motion said it represented an opportunity to make the UK the first country to eradicate cigarettes. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA |
Doctors have voted overwhelmingly to push for a permanent ban on the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 2000
The motion
passed at the British Medical Association's annual representatives' meeting on
Tuesday means that the doctors' union will lobby the government to introduce
the ban, in the same way it successfully pushed for a ban on lighting up in
public places and on smoking in cars carrying children, after votes in 2002 and
2011.
Tim
Crocker-Buque, a specialist registrar in public health medicine, who proposed
the motion, said it represented an opportunity to make the UK the first country
to eradicate cigarettes. "Smoking is not a rational, informed choice of
adulthood," he said. "Eighty per cent of smokers start as teenagers
as a result of intense peer pressure.
"Smokers
who start smoking at age 15 are three times as likely to die of smoking-related
cancer as someone who starts in their mid-20s."
The
proposal was supported by Sheila Hollins, chair of the BMA's board of science,
who said it would help "break the cycle of children starting to
smoke" and be a step towards achieving the association's goal of a
tobacco-free society by 2035.
A number of
doctors spoke against the proposal. Yohanna Takwoingi from Birmingham said the
number of 11 to 15-year-olds smoking had halved in 16 years. "Seeking a
headline ban is a headline-grabbing initiative that may lead to ridicule of the
profession," he said. He also said that alcohol should be banned if
tobacco was.
But
Crocker-Buque said: "Tobacco is not the same as alcohol and prohibition
will not work in the same way. The vast majority of people who use alcohol do
safely."
Other
opponents said a ban would demonise the working classes and lead to a black
market in the trade of cigarettes that would be potentially more dangerous than
their legal equivalent.
Ahead of
the vote, the proposal was condemned by the smokers' group Forest and the
Tobacco Manufacturers' Association, who both said that existing laws stopping
children smoking should be enforced.
Simon Clark
of Forest called the proposal "arbitrary, unenforceable and completely
illiberal".
The motion
was initially passed at the BMA's public health conference in February.
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