I have just finished writing an article, to be published tomorrow, about the menthol cigarette ban.
It was a bit long and this section didn't really fit so I took it out. The point I wanted to make, though, was this:
There’s a pettiness about the ban on the sale of menthol-flavoured tobacco products that says a lot about the regulators behind it. Following the ban it will still be legal for retailers to sell menthol-flavoured filters and papers in the same transaction as non-flavoured rolling tobacco, but not packaged together.
This may seem a very minor issue, hardly worth complaining about, but the Tobacco Products Directive is not just an attack on consumer choice, it’s an attack on convenience. This is what we mean when some of us talk about ‘creeping prohibition’.
Baby steps, for sure, but the direction of travel is clear. Prohibition, in the modern sense, is just not about banning things. It’s also about inconveniencing people to the extent that they may quit rather than continue their habit.
Some might say this is merely 'nudging' people to change their behaviour. I disagree.
Like the ban on cigarette vending machines, I think it's a deliberately spiteful act designed to make some people's lives just that little bit more difficult than it has to be.
The ban on menthol cigarettes is also an attack on pleasure. Sure there are alternatives – which I will list in another post – but the reality is that people have smoked menthol-flavoured cigarettes for decades because they prefer the taste.
This week that small pleasure will be taken away from them and the sad thing is, very few people seem bothered.