The UK’s smoking ban is government meddling at its worst and most pointless | Simon Jenkins

Just because Liz Truss and Boris Johnson – both opposed to the government’s proposed new smoking ban – hold a belief does not make it wrong.

Smoking is unpleasant, but in this week’s parliamentary debate, the word nicotine could have been replaced by cannabis, alcohol, ultra-processed foods, base jumping or mobile phones for children.

The introduction of vaping, though controversial when it’s young people doing it, is understood to have helped accelerate the fall in smoking, as per the drug policy charity Transform.

For all that, more than 6 million Britons still smoke, their burden on the NHS relieved only by their paying £10bn in tobacco taxes and dying – on average – younger.

Politicians everywhere have preferred to see gangsters triumph, crime soar, jails become crammed and their children ruined, rather than show the guts to decriminalise, regulate and control the hugely lucrative and dynamic drugs industry.

At every turn, the state is inviting itself to delve ever deeper into the lives and ethics of its citizens – accusations that are constantly thrown at authoritarian governments.