De Quincey was guessing when he said that a quarter of all human misery was toothache, but smoking can reliably be said to account for around one-seventh of UK deaths. Tobacco is a very big deal, and recent success in reducing smoking will do infinitely more for health than all the NHS reforms which have caused more political heat. When history is written, the smoking ban – together with civil partnerships, perhaps – could well loom larger than anything else New Labour did, just as the social reforms of the 1960s, which were at the time seen as tangential to the Wilson government's real business, are today regarded as its hallmark.
It is, then, a little dismaying to find that a thick fug of confusion obscures the next steps in the anti-smoking strategy set out this week. Encouragingly, there was at last recognition that persuading adults to quit is as important as stopping youngsters from starting, correcting an imbalance that has long riled epidemiologists, including the late Richard Doll, who first exposed the link with cancer. But there was no principled argument about when the state should and should not act, as it seeks to discourage smoking without trampling over liberty. Two big ideas were floated: wrapping cigarettes in plain packaging, and barring smokers already forced outside by the ban from gathering on the steps. Ministers got things entirely upside-down by being firm in relation to the latter and flaky in respect of the former.
Having banned billboards and magazine ads, there should be no problem in stipulating plain boxes for cigarettes. "Healthier" pastel shades, and flashes of gold to suggest affluence are today – as the strategy observes – "the most important part of brand marketing", and something which studies have shown persuades additional people to puff. Yet after flying the kite and marshalling the evidence, the government shrank from banning this brainwashing, resolving instead merely to "encourage research" while giving "weight to ... intellectual property rights and freedom of trade". That is a pledge of inaction if ever there was one, and it will delight the likes of Imperial, which released buoyant trading figures on Tuesday.
No such luck, though, for their hapless customers, who ministers signalled would soon be pushed further out into the cold. Passive smoking is a real threat, but it is not in the same danger league as the active variety, and the risks of stepping momentarily through a gaggle of gaspers on the way in to a restaurant would hardly register on the scale. Defining how much dispersal is required will be tricky enough, and credibly policing it all but impossible. Sadly it seems the grand plan involves going after the addicts, while leaving the peddlers alone.
