From the mouths of children

I made a very brief appearance on the latest edition of Sharp End, a late night current affairs programme broadcast on Mondays on ITV Wales.

This week’s programme featured an item about the Tobacco and Vapes Bill during which a group of schoolchildren (teenagers) were asked their opinions on the generational ban.

I groaned, assuming they would be strongly in favour because that’s what normally happens when children are invited to express a view on issues such as this.

Instead, when asked by their teacher, “If you were an MP voting on this bill, would you vote for it?”, and invited to put their hand up, not one of the dozen children in the classroom did so.

Instead comments included:

“I feel like we’re educated well enough so we should have the decision ourselves rather than being banned altogether.”

“I feel like it’s not fair. We have no right to have a choice anymore. What will happen further on down the line? They could ban anything really.”

“It’s going to create more problems than you’re solving. And say you ban them, and no-one can buy them any more … people are going to start making them illegally, and it’s just going to become worse than what it was before.”

“When you ban something like this where does the line actually stop? You can ban cigarettes and then you can go on to alcohol or anything like that that could affect you in many different ways, but I think we should have the right to a choice. We’ve been educated from a very young age and no-one sees it as good anymore. Not our age anyway. “

Even the Sharp End reporter was taken aback:

“So I imagine a lot of people watching this will go, ‘OK, we would have thought that you would all be in favour of banning this’, but it seems like that’s not what you all think.”

It appears that the next generation - the very people the generational ban is designed to ‘protect’ - have more sense than our elected representatives. Who knew?!

You can watch it here. The item starts at 44:50.