Charles Amos is a former deputy chairman of the East Grinstead Conservatives and was previously a town councillor. He writes The Musing Individualist on Substack.
Rishi Sunak’s announcement that he wishes to ban disposable vapes, restrict e-cigarette flavours, require plain packing, and impose a form of display ban on them is yet another blow to individual freedom.
Ensuring children never adopt the bad habit of vaping is the stated aim of these interventions. Accepting the morality behind these interventions is to put Britain on a runaway train to an authoritarian society where free speech is curtailed, the liberty to get publicly drunk is denied, and where the private homes of vapers are invaded by the state. No society with an ounce of respect for liberty could accept this situation. This morality must be rejected, along with the restrictions themselves.
Let us first consider plain packing and the display ban. The moral idea here is shop displays and exciting packaging wrongly increases the prospect of children taking up the bad habit of vaping. A ban is thus warranted to stop it. But research on display bans for tobacco finds they fail to reduce its consumption. I suspect the same applies to vaping too.
The evidence on plain packing for tobacco also finds it doesn’t work. A randomised control trial found ‘there was no evidence of increased quitting or reduced consumption [due to plain packets], and this was biochemically validated at the postintervention visit’. Again, a similar effect for plain packing could be expected for vaping products. Paternalists should therefore err against plain packing and display bans for vape products based on their own reasoning.
Even assuming this evidence is false, the moral idea is itself objectionable. If it is accepted the freedom of some may be infringed upon to reduce the chance of others taking up bad habits, via influence alone, the sky is the limit. Banning smoking in films and stopping people from getting merrily drunk in pubs must be advocated as well because children could take up these bad habits due to the coolness these people themselves display.
Given children whose parents smoke are four times more likely to take up cigarettes themselves, and, assuming a similar situation with vaping, banning parents from vaping in their own homes (even outside them) is warranted by this moral idea too; which would require home surveillance to enforce. This is all incompatible with any formulation of our basic personal freedoms.
Banning disposable vapes is similarly supported to raise the initial costs of taking up a bad habit (if you think of vaping as a bad habit). Again, where does this moral reasoning end? Are we to raise the price of the cheapest childish alcoholic drinks next, or, increase the price of doughnuts to stop children getting the taste for fatty foods?
And why should the 31 per cent of adult vapers who use disposable cigarettes have their freedom to purchase them infringed to protect children; no one would accept banning alcohol for all adults on the same grounds (or even alcohol children disproportionately consume). But with twice as many 11-15-year-olds drinking regularly compared to vaping regularly, this is the end to which paternalist reasoning drives us. Nicotine is as addictive as alcohol and caffeine. This cannot be used to justify banning the former but not the latter for adults on behalf of children.
It might be argued disposable vapes create an undue quantity of litter. But it is already illegal to litter though and this law should be enforced, instead of restricting the liberty of the vast majority who do responsibly dispose of them to stop the guilty few who do not. And if this is thought not to do, a special tax on the product to finance litter collection could be imposed instead of a ban. In the economist’s terms, the negative externality would be internalised to the consumer.
But even disregarding concerns about individual freedom, these restrictions are likely to backfire on their own grounds. Banning disposable vapes increases the initial cost of taking up vaping from about £5 to £40 for a multiple-use vape; which, ceteris paribus, reduces smokers on the margin from switching to vaping.
The same reasoning applies to the ban on flavours targeted at children too, for, some smokers will only switch to vaping due to them. Given smoking is twenty times more harmful than vaping, the probability these restrictions will stop even a small number of smokers from quitting is reason enough to oppose it, because the loss of health to these individuals is so much larger than the minor harm child vapers will do to themselves.
Should it be thought vaping is nothing but a gateway to smoking for children, it should be pointed out that the data suggests otherwise. From 2013 to 2023 the percentage of children aged eleven to seventeen consuming cigarettes fell from 6 per cent to 3.4 per cent while e-cigarette usage increased from 1 per cent to 7.6 per cent, suggesting vaping actually crowds out smoking.
It might be argued that overall harm has increased because the total of the two figures has increased to 8.6 per cent compared to 7 per cent before. But as I have mentioned, because smoking is twenty times worse than vaping, usage among children would have to climb to roughly half of eleven-to seventeen-year-olds to ensure the same quantity of harm to children as occurred in 2013. Accepting the fact children are always going to get their hands on cigarettes or vapes, it is best for their own health if they get their hands on disposable vapes.
Although the state and parents should stop children from seriously harming themselves, this license cannot be used to restrict the freedom of adults via disposable e-cigarette, flavour, and display bans. Even accepting the moral idea behind these vaping restrictions, there is a good chance they will backfire due to children who would have vaped taking up smoking instead.
The freedom of individuals to vape whatever they wish must stand. These wretched restrictions must go.
Charles Amos is a former deputy chairman of the East Grinstead Conservatives and was previously a town councillor. He writes The Musing Individualist on Substack.
Rishi Sunak’s announcement that he wishes to ban disposable vapes, restrict e-cigarette flavours, require plain packing, and impose a form of display ban on them is yet another blow to individual freedom.
Ensuring children never adopt the bad habit of vaping is the stated aim of these interventions. Accepting the morality behind these interventions is to put Britain on a runaway train to an authoritarian society where free speech is curtailed, the liberty to get publicly drunk is denied, and where the private homes of vapers are invaded by the state. No society with an ounce of respect for liberty could accept this situation. This morality must be rejected, along with the restrictions themselves.
Let us first consider plain packing and the display ban. The moral idea here is shop displays and exciting packaging wrongly increases the prospect of children taking up the bad habit of vaping. A ban is thus warranted to stop it. But research on display bans for tobacco finds they fail to reduce its consumption. I suspect the same applies to vaping too.
The evidence on plain packing for tobacco also finds it doesn’t work. A randomised control trial found ‘there was no evidence of increased quitting or reduced consumption [due to plain packets], and this was biochemically validated at the postintervention visit’. Again, a similar effect for plain packing could be expected for vaping products. Paternalists should therefore err against plain packing and display bans for vape products based on their own reasoning.
Even assuming this evidence is false, the moral idea is itself objectionable. If it is accepted the freedom of some may be infringed upon to reduce the chance of others taking up bad habits, via influence alone, the sky is the limit. Banning smoking in films and stopping people from getting merrily drunk in pubs must be advocated as well because children could take up these bad habits due to the coolness these people themselves display.
Given children whose parents smoke are four times more likely to take up cigarettes themselves, and, assuming a similar situation with vaping, banning parents from vaping in their own homes (even outside them) is warranted by this moral idea too; which would require home surveillance to enforce. This is all incompatible with any formulation of our basic personal freedoms.
Banning disposable vapes is similarly supported to raise the initial costs of taking up a bad habit (if you think of vaping as a bad habit). Again, where does this moral reasoning end? Are we to raise the price of the cheapest childish alcoholic drinks next, or, increase the price of doughnuts to stop children getting the taste for fatty foods?
And why should the 31 per cent of adult vapers who use disposable cigarettes have their freedom to purchase them infringed to protect children; no one would accept banning alcohol for all adults on the same grounds (or even alcohol children disproportionately consume). But with twice as many 11-15-year-olds drinking regularly compared to vaping regularly, this is the end to which paternalist reasoning drives us. Nicotine is as addictive as alcohol and caffeine. This cannot be used to justify banning the former but not the latter for adults on behalf of children.
It might be argued disposable vapes create an undue quantity of litter. But it is already illegal to litter though and this law should be enforced, instead of restricting the liberty of the vast majority who do responsibly dispose of them to stop the guilty few who do not. And if this is thought not to do, a special tax on the product to finance litter collection could be imposed instead of a ban. In the economist’s terms, the negative externality would be internalised to the consumer.
But even disregarding concerns about individual freedom, these restrictions are likely to backfire on their own grounds. Banning disposable vapes increases the initial cost of taking up vaping from about £5 to £40 for a multiple-use vape; which, ceteris paribus, reduces smokers on the margin from switching to vaping.
The same reasoning applies to the ban on flavours targeted at children too, for, some smokers will only switch to vaping due to them. Given smoking is twenty times more harmful than vaping, the probability these restrictions will stop even a small number of smokers from quitting is reason enough to oppose it, because the loss of health to these individuals is so much larger than the minor harm child vapers will do to themselves.
Should it be thought vaping is nothing but a gateway to smoking for children, it should be pointed out that the data suggests otherwise. From 2013 to 2023 the percentage of children aged eleven to seventeen consuming cigarettes fell from 6 per cent to 3.4 per cent while e-cigarette usage increased from 1 per cent to 7.6 per cent, suggesting vaping actually crowds out smoking.
It might be argued that overall harm has increased because the total of the two figures has increased to 8.6 per cent compared to 7 per cent before. But as I have mentioned, because smoking is twenty times worse than vaping, usage among children would have to climb to roughly half of eleven-to seventeen-year-olds to ensure the same quantity of harm to children as occurred in 2013. Accepting the fact children are always going to get their hands on cigarettes or vapes, it is best for their own health if they get their hands on disposable vapes.
Although the state and parents should stop children from seriously harming themselves, this license cannot be used to restrict the freedom of adults via disposable e-cigarette, flavour, and display bans. Even accepting the moral idea behind these vaping restrictions, there is a good chance they will backfire due to children who would have vaped taking up smoking instead.
The freedom of individuals to vape whatever they wish must stand. These wretched restrictions must go.