The free market wonks aren’t happy with Sunak’s New-Zealand style smoking ban. Prohibition generally doesn’t work in practice…

The IEA’s Chris Snowden says the policy is “hideously illiberal and unconservative, it is full of holes. It will create a two tier society in which adults buy cigarettes informally from slightly older adults and will inflate the black market in general. It may well breach equalities legislation”.

Maxwell Marlow at the ASI calls it a “Black Market’s Charter – criminals, as they do already, will ramp up their penetration into a legal and regulated tobacco market”. 

Simon Clark, director of smoker-rights group Forest said “it won’t stop young people smoking because prohibition doesn’t work. Anyone who wants to smoke will buy tobacco abroad or from illicit sources. This is the opposite of levelling up, it’s dumbing down”.

18% of cigarettes are already sold illegally. Out-of-the-car-boot salesmen will be jumping with joy…