Is this REALLY the hill to plant your flag on, Rishi?

What on earth is the tory Government doing promoting illiberal, nannying policies instead of the issues that people actually care about? as part of Rishi Sunak’s crusade against smoking, the Government now plans to ban disposable vapes and restrict sweet and fruity e-cigarette flavours.

The move is intended to cut youth vaping and will be twinned with previously announced legislation to impose a generational ban on tobacco products for anyone born on or after January 1, 2009.

I do not doubt the Prime Minister’s good intentions, but it is not the job of Conservatives to tell people how to live their lives.

Why, in an election year, is Sunak pushing eccentric, niche legislation when he desperately needs to nurture the support of the tory faithful with proper centre-Right policies?

The first thing to understand is that, contrary to Sunak’s intentions, this policy will actually have a detrimental effect on public health. according to the anti-smoking charity ash, 2.7 million use e-cigarettes – including disposable vapes – to help them quit.

Professor Jamie Brown, senior author of a Cancer Research UK-funded study into the proposals, says that Sunak’s ban ‘may discourage use of e-cigarettes among people trying to quit smoking and may induce relapse among those who have already used disposables to quit’.

Additionally, the free-market think-tank the Institute of Economic affairs has described the scheme as ‘effectively pro-smoking policies’ that ‘will drive vapers back to cigarettes’.

Some 35 years ago, as a chainsmoker in my twenties, I had to give up the ‘coffin nails’ – as we called Player’s Number 6 cigarettes – by emptying east London sweet shops of sugary, tooth-rotting lollipops, and sucking one every time I wanted to light up.

Without doubt, a cheap and handy vape would’ve helped me kick the habit far sooner.

Of course, vapes contain addictive nicotine and shouldn’t be encouraged, but in banning disposable ones, Sunak is going too far.

The ramifications for public health could be catastrophic, putting millions – especially young people – on cigarettes, in some cases for the first time.

Worse still, not everyone will turn to traditional tobacco products to sate their addiction.

Plenty will instead buy readily available black- market vapes, some of which have been shown to be laced with THC – the psychoactive compound of cannabis – and vitamin E acetate, often used in skin products but dangerous to inhale.

These doctored vapes were implicated in the case of three school children collapsing in Sleaford town centre, in Lincolnshire, last March.

After treatment, the teenagers recovered – a lucky escape given that illicit vapes are thought to be responsible for scores of deaths in the US each year.

These vapes are the real enemy, not licensed off-the-shelf products the Government now wants to ban. and ‘ban’ – typically Labour Party parlance – now seems to be the word du jour for Sunak.

For the vape crackdown comes alongside his equally nonsensical wheeze to bar the next generation from smoking altogether.

THOSEaged 15 and younger today will have their behaviour policed as adults in a way that their older peers will not, creating a two-tier justice system – and the absurd prospect of, say, 45-year-olds in the future being denied the right to buy cigarettes but 46-year-olds legally able to enjoy them.

In 2021, New Zealand became the first country to announce such a measure under lockdown zealot and former Leftist prime minister Jacinda ardern.

But when the new centre-Right coalition was elected last year, one of its first steps was to scrap the draconian plan. Yet in the UK, the supposedly Conservative Government seems determined to emulate ardern’s hysterical authoritarianism.

My question for the Prime Minister is this: in an election year, is prohibition really the political hill upon which you want to plant your tattered flag?

Perhaps the dictators of the world – to say nothing of the nannying Labour Party – would give their nod of approval. But aside from autocrats and Leftists, who does the Government think it will win over with this intervention?

Yesterday’s announcement came on a Monday, when our Prime Minister apparently fasts – a weekly habit revealed by a friend of his at the weekend.

his abstemiousness may be commendable on health grounds but millions of people like the odd drink, smoke or vape, and as adults should surely be free to live their lives. For heaven’s sake, Rishi – learn to pick your battles.