Generational Smoking Bans

[Broucek]

I would suggest the bureaucracy required for means testing might cost you more than saved from not treating higher earners on the NHS....

I understand that One reason Scotland has free prescriptions for all is that (from memory) c. 90% had them free (older people, children low wage) anyway and the extra admin for the 10% would have significantly reduced the marginal saving. As others have mentioned, it's not like most high earners are not contributing significantly via income tax in any case.

It's a regrettable trend that a desire for "fairness" can often drive significant counter-productive complexity. (Some people even suggested that the energy price help should have been means tested which would have slowed everything massively.)

 

[RailWonderer]

I don't like smoking, I don't understand why anyone would do it, but banning it is a very very stupid idea. The UK's drug dealers must be rubbing their hands with glee at the idea though.

Exactly. Imagine all the people from abroad who'll visit here or work here that will smoke in their own countries but can't buy cigarettes here. What will they do? Some of them will certainly go to illegal dealers, meaning fake cigarettes will proliferate, creating even worse health effects, or they'll buy gray market imported cigarettes from Eastern Europe or somewhere where they are cheap. They'll even become cheaper without government taxes so people will smoke more of them.