Raise cigarette prices.

And we only have to look at what happens with other, illegal drugs; the market prices soar but addicts still buy, and fund their habits from crime. So the crime rate goes up..

(Phoenix it is SO good to "hear" your voice again!)

can agree Flickety....shops not far from here sell fake fags from China, under counter, people buy them because they are £2 packet as opposed to the prices that have been mentioned...even although people in China are employed to pick up dog ends, manufacturer reprocesses, adds substances, packed in identical packages to known brands in UK........

Putting prices up too far would merely increase the amount of cigarette smuggling that would take place. It would be a godsend to organised crime gangs here and overseas.

Using big hammers to break small nuts is counter productive. Many Asian countries have draconian measures to discourage drug smugglers. In Malayasia and Indonesia they execute them but, as we know from the case of a British woman condemned to death in Indonesia, the big boys, in this case also British, who organised the smuggling ring, got away with it, presumably they bribed or blackmailed the right people. It is the silly woman who was so easily duped to carry the drugs that is quite, literally going to get it in the neck. It certainly hasn't stopped drug smuggling

We would end up with most smokers smoking smuggled cigarettes, our prisons full of cigarette mules who we know are either desperately poor people prepared to risk everything for money or silly dupes like the woman in Indonesia. Tax revenue would drop and smoking related medical problems would remain.

Gracemun, Ariadne .

Can't he get them on prescription?

I wouldn't be so sure of that Frank as smoking is still a great source of revenue to the government . If everyone stopped smoking simultaneously the money would have to made up from somewhere.

Secondly my son who has smoked from being 16 (probably younger if the truth be known) has been trying to give up and he is currently in week 6 of no smoking . He is using the patches at nicotine replacement at the moment and weaning himself down gradually . I was astonished to see the cost of these patches and find it appalling that there is very little money to be saved by anyone using them to stop smoking when it is often the cost that pushes someone into giving up in the first place.

Greatnan

It seems you think the price of cigarettes should be higher than I suggested.
If you want it to be £250 for 20 I would not object as it would not affect my cost of living.
It may give me a rise in my pension as it is index linked.
The inflation rate will rise without it affecting my living costs.

Frank

Nor me, Frank, but my father and older sister and brother all smoked in the house when I was a child. Luckily, it does not seem to have affected me, but I did have bronchitis ever Winter when I lived in Salford with them.

Greatnan

It is not just young relatives who get their health damaged.
When I had a medical I had some nicotine inside me and I have never smoked in my life.

Frank

I am with Frank on this one - obviously not £80 for 20, but enough to stop 12-year olds starting this wretched self-destroying habit. There seems to be nothing that will stop older addicts continuing to damage their own health and possibly that of their young relatives.
(Cue for anecdotal tales of uncle who smoked 40 a day and lived to 100).

Got it in one, Nonu!

Nonu talk heap big sense.

Don"t be daft , hunterf

But actually (or oddly!) Frank has a point, which petra illuminates. There is too much revenue from tobacco for the government to do anything to lose it.

merlotgran

£80 for 20 cigarettes.

Then people would stop buying them. But the government don't want that, do they.

Merlot, you're brilliant!

Bargain!

MERLOT , LOL.

What £8 for 200?

Frank Is your alter ego called Bentley or Moggsy77?