Raising age limit won't stop people smoking

ONCE upon a time, I loved nothing better than to sit back and inhale a mouthful of smoke and let it sink to my very toes. I knew it was bad for me, but I didn’t care – there was nothing to match the feeling of ‘wellbeing’ I got from a cigarette.

I am of the generation where you started smoking young. In fact, I was a mere 12 years’ old when I became addicted to cigarettes. It started harmlessly enough – taking the odd cigarette from a packet owned by my mother. Then, with a few bob earned from a summer job in a local bakery, I started buying the odd packet of ten cigarettes myself.

At first, they lasted a couple of days but soon I was buying a packet of ten cigarettes every second day. Within a few years, I was a committed smoker, buying a packet of 20 cigarettes every day.

Every now and then someone would object to my smoking in their company, but I brushed it off and said I had a right to do whatever I wanted, wherever I wanted. There was no such thing as a smoking ban, and those who objected to us smokers were a bit ‘odd’, to say the least.

By the time I was in my thirties, that packet per day had progressed to two and on occasion three packets a day. I had a cigarette in my mouth 24 hours a day. There were times when I woke up just to have a cigarette and get the nicotine hit before going back to sleep again.

But attitudes were slowly changing and, as I got older, I also realised that perhaps I should pay attention to the health risks associated with my smoking. In the end, I decided to give them a miss – but it did take three attempts before I finally kicked the habit.

The first time I managed to stay off cigarettes for three years, but then started having the odd cigar and, before I knew it, I was making up for lost time. The second occasion I tried and managed to say nicotine free for one year before a home rolled cigarette sealed the deal once again.

The last time was 30 years ago, but on that occasion I opted for the help of a nicotine patch on each arm for six months before I trusted myself to steer clear of them. And for years afterwards, whenever I spoke about my smoking habit, I felt the longing come on me again to have just one. However, I know that one cigarette will, even after a break of 30 years, lead me back to where I was. Irrespective of the health implications, I don’t think I could afford to smoke to the same extent as I once did, such is the cost of a pack of 20.

That brings me along to moves currently afoot in the Dáil to introduce legislation to increase the legal age at which tobacco can be bought – from 18 to 21 years of age. Cabinet has approved the proposed legislation and, when it becomes law, we will be the first country in Europe to introduce such a ban. The move is aimed at reducing the number of people who smoke. It is also designed to deter people from smoking.

I agree that smoking is bad for you. One in three people who smoke will die from cancer or another debilitating disease directly associated with smoking. A total of 4,500 people in this country die each year because of smoking. All very good reasons why we should do everything we can to discourage people from smoking.

But will increasing the legal age do that? I don’t think so.

There may be fines and or prison sentences imposed for those who violate the new legislation, but is it going to be policed? It is next to impossible to guess a young person’s age nowadays and, on top of that, there is no legislation in place to ban vapes.

By the way, the changes to the law relating to cigarettes will not come into effect until 2028. Why? Because we want to make sure that those who turned 18 before the new Bill comes into effect will not be affected. There is nothing quite like being so politically correct that we look completely stupid, is there?

Let me stress that I agree smoking is bad for you and every effort must be made to wean people off cigarettes; I just don’t believe increasing the legal age at which you can buy them is the way forward. Equally, I do not think that increasing the tax on cigarettes in every budget is the way forward either. Having been a heavy smoker, I know how difficult it is to try to kick the habit – and there are people not as lucky as me to have done so.

If the government is serious about getting some of the 18% of the population who smoke off cigarettes, then it should start with vapes and provide free patches or whatever else is on the market to assist smokers to kick the habit once and for all. Increasing the legal age will do nothing to deter people.