As a conservative non-smoker who in his youth was a libertarian twenty-a-day man, I can see both sides of the argument over the government’s recent anti-smoking legislation. Sure, cigarettes can be delicious, and it’s entirely up to the adult individual, not the state, whether he or she decides to light up.
But as I finally came to accept eleven years ago, smoking is also a profoundly stupid habit, and if government interference can prevent people ever taking it up, then so be it. I was fervently against the 2007 smoking ban in pubs, but came to acknowledge that it greatly helped in the process of de-normalising smoking. And de-normalised smoking has thoroughly become.
History has no guiding spirit, direction or end goal. It’s just a series of events
We allow the state to tell us what do in so many spheres of life. We see this manifest everywhere. They’re called laws. Yet, like many other members of the public, along with plenty of Conservative MPs, I felt deeply uneasy at this extreme legislation. Not just for the logistical problems it poses in implementation, and the onus it will place on future grown-ups: will a 49-year-old of the future have to carry ID round with him to buy fags, or ask his 50-year-old friend to get a packet for him? But also for what it represents and the precedent it sets.
For whatever impeccably logical arguments about protecting future generations from this deadly habit can be made, this absolutist legislation is unquestionably draconian. Many people justifiably ask themselves whether the next targets will be alcohol, fizzy drinks and junk foods. The same paternalist arguments could be used for making these products more difficult to procure. Why not let the state also set us free when it comes to booze and burgers?
Libertarians, and those of us with libertarian instincts, have been alarmed at this legislation because the political mood at the moment has taken a decidedly authoritarian turn. There is talk now of banning the sale of smartphones or even mere mobile phones for young teenagers on account of the deleterious effect their use, in combination with social media, is having on their mental health.
As with the long-standing smoking campaigns, there is the same anti-individual logic and abnegation of personal responsibility afoot. Parents, we are told, feel unwilling to deprive their children of smartphones, lest they become outcasts among their peers. It would be far better and easier to pass responsibility to the state. The state, or the government to be specific, would relish such a movement. Currently, it is in that parlous position where it feels it needs to do something good, or is seen to be doing something good.
More than half of parents surveyed back a smartphone ban for under-16s. As Katy Balls wrote in her Times column yesterday, such a move could muster support from across the political spectrum, combining the interest of the family values right and centre left paternalists.
Paternalism is in the air. This week, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) called for the smacking of children to be outlawed throughout the UK (it’s already illegal in Scotland and Wales). It warned that children who are subject to physical punishment are more likely to suffer mental issues and are at risk of more serious physical abuse.
Most people will be torn between internal authoritarian and libertarian voices on this issue. The former will reason that of course it’s a good thing to prevent cruelty to children by irresponsible or negligent parents, and the latter will argue that a short, sharp smack is the best way to reprimand a four-year-old who has just run into the road or has stuck a fork in an electric socket.
The authoritarians will win, of course. They’ve got history on their side. Or at least they think they have. For behind all the pragmatic reasons put forward for current laws, there is the subconscious understanding that all of this represents ‘progress’ (always a good thing). We used to smoke and smack children in the past, goes the common-place argument, so that which deters both must represent both now and the future.
The spectre of historical determinacy lurks. The robust Times leader article earlier this week in favour of the smoking ban spoiled it all at the end with that dreaded phrase that Sunak ‘is on the right side of history’. The same newspaper’s leader on smacking children yesterday referred approvingly to the RCPCH’s plea ‘to bring child-rearing into the 21st century’, and that it was time that we ‘embraced modernity’.
Maybe they’ve been reading too much Hegel or Marx. But history has no guiding spirit, direction or end goal. It’s just a series of events. Or maybe they assume, as it appears many do, that the calendar should dictate policy. There seems to be a tacit understanding that as more time elapses, the more power we should hand over to the state.
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