Note - see part two here.
Rishi Sunak’s government is facing a monumental collapse (or even political oblivion) in the next General Election, due by January 2025 at the latest. One of its Members of Parliament has just defected to Labour and YouGov polling shows that the Conservative party is only three percentage points ahead of Reform. Emblematic of how the bungling government has surrendered an 80-seat majority in 2019 through inept policymaking is its systematic destruction of saving lives by being the leader in tobacco harm reduction (THR). Promoting THR is one of the very few things the government had actually done very well up until now.
The UK was previously the world leader in THR, that is attracting people who smoke away from combustible tobacco (which will kill them) to reduced risk nicotine products which will help them live longer and healthier lives.
Despite THR products helping people, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced a whopping 143 percent tax rise on vaping products during March’s budget. Ironically, the target of this tax will not only be people who currently vape, but also those who have taken up the government’s much-vaunted Swap to Stop campaign.
This initiative was announced less than a year before Hunt’s budget speech and its intention is to hand out one million free vapes to people who smoke in order to help them quit. Rules on the devices to be given away dictate that they must not be disposable and not manufactured by the tobacco industry. In effect, this means reusable devices with a refillable tank in which to pour e-liquid – the very e-liquid to which the Chancellor is now applying eye-watering taxes.
With one hand, the government is encouraging people to quit smoking by giving them vapes for the good of their health, while the other hand – the Chancellor’s – is picking their pockets for the “sin” of vaping the devices the government has provided them with.
For a government which had tabled the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which has now passed its second reading, to prohibit combustible cigarette sales forever, to then launch an all-out attack on alternative smokeless products shows a laughable lack of joined up thinking. Furthermore, it also confirms that Hunt’s policy is simply a cynical tax grab which exposes the government’s supposed concern about smoking and public health as nothing but a confidence trick.
A statement published recently by some of the UK’s foremost experts on vaping at London South Bank University (LSBU) stated that “[t]he proposal to add duty to e-liquid according to nicotine strength is ill-conceived, not based on the scientific evidence, and could cause more harm than good.”
The cause of the harm foreseen by LSBU academics is the government’s understanding of nicotine is naïve and deeply flawed. It has been known since the 1970s that “people smoke for nicotine, but they die from the tar” (Russell, 1976). Nicotine is dependence-forming but not otherwise harmful. It does not cause cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary, or cardiovascular disease, which is why people have safely used nicotine replacement therapy products for decades. As LSBU explains, “using lower nicotine strengths is associated with consuming more e-liquid through taking longer, harder and more frequent puffs,” meaning Hunt’s proposals were conceived in blind ignorance. Perhaps if he had referred to the government-commissioned documents his impact assessment conspired to ignore, it would have become apparent that his tax is a disastrous mistake.
Sunak’s Chancellor was searching for a revenue-raiser and, no doubt, a way of cashing in on the current wave of misinformed distrust of vaping to attract votes. In doing so, he has introduced a tax which will deter smokers from quitting and lead to vapers returning to smoking.
It is also likely his government will be punished at the ballot box. For many of the five million vapers in the UK, their pride in quitting smoking using vapes is a vote-defining issue. Concerned parents and others who just dislike vaping will not change their entire political outlook because of a vape tax. However, a vast number of vapers will. They will remember that it was the Conservatives who more than doubled the cost of using products which a large majority feel has saved their lives.
This is no way to govern, and certainly no way to craft tax policy. It is, however, a perfect way of publicising the all-round incompetence of Sunak’s blundering government.
Martin Cullip is an International Fellow at The Taxpayers Protection Alliance's Consumer Center and is based in South London, UK.
