Some outdoor eating areas are facing new smoking ban
SMOKING will be banned in cars carrying children, playgrounds and some outdoor eating areas under tough new laws under consultation.
As part of the Tobacco Control Strategy, Health and Social Services aims to bring the number of people smoking in the island down to 5% by 2025 – when the island would be considered smoke-free – through new laws, increased taxes and reinforcing the educational message that smoking is bad for people.
Head of health improvement Linda Prickett did not want the measures viewed as a witch hunt targeting those who had ignored the health message, but agreed this was a more coercive way of getting people to quit.
'What we are really trying to do is make sure the kind of help that is on offer is for those who still smoke, and we want to protect children and vulnerable people from second-hand smoke. We live in a community where smoking is prevalent, 12.5% of adults smoke, more than one in 10. We can nudge people to think again, and employ an evidence-based strategy. If cigarettes are made more expensive, people smoke them less and fewer take them up.'
As part of the strategy, cigarette duty would increase by 10% above inflation every year, and tobacco duty would jump by 15%.
