Baroness Gerada (CB)

My Lords, I am also against these amendments. I will disclose a conflict of interest: I started smoking when I was 16—and 33 years later, like many of us who start to smoke at that age, because it is a childhood disease, I gave up. We know and have heard about all the health effects of smoking, but we also have to realise that smoking is an easy addiction to start. I have looked after every addiction—heroin, cocaine, alcohol—and smoking is the easiest. You need only two cigarettes for 80% of people to be addicted, like me, for 33 years, and many people, like me, try to give up. It is not just addiction that is the problem. It is not even about death, although death is a bad outcome to have. It is also about all the other complications. Like many smokers, I have lost many of my teeth. Our eyesight goes. We have skin problems. Smoking causes all sorts of things. As a GP for nearly 30 years, I am pleased that I have seen a massive reduction in people with smoking-related diseases. My surgeries used to be full of what we call blue bloaters and pink puffers and full of people with premature heart disease. It is not an accident that I no longer see that in my consulting room; it is because of the hard work of our Chief Medical Officers, the Department of Health, ASH and many others to stop normalising smoking. On the issue of the black market, there is of course a price differential. Wherever there is a price differential you will get a black market, whether it is diesel, cigarettes, alcohol or whatever. But the Bill is about stopping people starting—as the noble Lord said, preventing the next generation that has not even been born from starting. We have to focus on prevention, which is what the Bill is about.