Cigarette Stick Health Warnings Bill [HL]

Baroness Uddin Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the distinguished noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for bringing this Bill to the House. It is a privilege to stand in support of it.

I am a lifelong one-woman evangelical missionary in my family for the anti-smoking movement—not at all successfully in the end. I confess that at 11 years of age, alongside my cousin and brother’s band of brothers, a cricket team, I participated in the initiation of smoking the dried stick of a flower plant. I put on record that I cannot recall what it was, only that it smelled good.

I am happy to say that almost all of us did not become lifelong smokers. I put away these encounters until my marriage to a devotee of nicotine who has completely ignored me, and all government campaigns and advice. Sadly, four of our children have subsequently smoked, although happily they do not smoke now—and there is no smoking allowed inside my house. As if this was not enough, as a professional, I proceeded to work with smokers who progressed to being addicted to cannabis and other weed products. Therefore, I have witnessed some of the evident damage that smoking causes to health and well-being, as well to as the NHS and the health of our nation, with the associated dimension of increasing allergies and asthma among children. I fundamentally disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Naseby.

We must acknowledge and welcome the progress of government action on reducing smoking among the general population. We have come a long way and now have a greater level of knowledge and understanding of the devastating health impact and addictions that result from smoking. I assume that there is sufficient research and evidence on the serious injury and impact of smoking on young brains, as well as on the immense long-term destruction caused by smoking addiction. Smoking continues to cause premature and painful deaths, as has already been said by noble Lords. It is harrowing to learn that each day nearly 300 children under 16 smoke for the first time.

As a professional working in the field of drug addiction, I know all too well the implications for these adults who begin by trying smoking and then smoke into later life, experimenting with many other forms of addiction. I was speaking a few days ago to one of a group of young people in their 20s. A former smoker, he had proceeded to try cannabis and unsafe weed. I asked whether the warnings that have been suggested on cigarette papers would be a strong enough deterrent. The response was simply that, once they are hooked on the products, the warnings to quit smoking imminently have difficultly impacting their and their peer group’s decisions. However, he made the point that access to cigarettes was the main factor and that, although it is illegal, they can be bought from some shops quite easily by children as young as 12 or 13.

This one opinion is reinforced by ASH’s point that smokers are becoming too familiar with, perhaps complacent about, existing warnings and that we may need to explore alternative techniques to break what often becomes a lifelong, habitual practice, which is difficult to break away from and an embedded part of social interaction with peers, among younger groups. While there is clear evidence that the anti-smoking campaigns and education programmes have been impactful, resulting in dropping numbers of smokers among certain groups of the population, including pregnant women—on which I have done a lot of work in the community—this is not evident among larger numbers of children in some parts of inner cities. Where I live, the numbers gathering outside school gates speak volumes about the societal failure of public education on the danger of beginning smoking when young.

The message that smoking kills or causes cancer on every cigarette stick may not prevent the first test of peer pressure or experimental trial, but it would certainly reinforce the warning to children about the danger of smoking in the long term. That is very important. Therefore, I am in favour of making all the necessary efforts to warn against the danger of smoking and this should extend to writing warnings on all cigarette papers, including the filters used with hand-rolled tobacco. The latest fad of vaping also requires our attention, as it will be an imminent problem, because it still contains significant amounts of nicotine.

I would like to see more specific public education targeting children and families on the danger of addiction to smoking. The promise to create a smoke-free England by 2030 is a huge challenge, knowing that even then millions will have perished in its wake. Nevertheless, we should remain committed to these ambitions, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and other noble Lords for their sterling efforts.