Ian McCartney MP: Time to act on smoking

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Labour MP Ian McCartney discusses the case for banning cigarette vending machines.

Question: Why do you believe it is important to ban cigarette vending machines?

Ian McCartney: The evidence is overwhelming that vending machines are the route for young people into starting smoking. All smokers start young and, as a consequence of that, by their teenage years are completely hooked.

What makes it even more important is that given we have now made the changes in banning smoking in public places and restricted workplaces, in those areas where it is already banned are these machines.

It is so easy for children to get their hands on cigarettes through these machines.

Question: What do you say to people who might say that a ban on cigarette vending machines damages freedom of choice for older smokers?

Ian McCartney: No, the freedom of choice argument is a nonsense argument. Only one per cent of cigarettes are bought through vending machines. Adults rarely use them. One in twenty adults use them, but one in six kids use them.

In a recent survey, two-thirds of all adults, including a majority of smokers, want these machines banned.

Adult smokers don't want young people to go through what they went through and end up addicted. There is overwhelming public support for this ban.

The tobacco industry is trying to get local tobacconists to complain to MPs. Well I'm not in favour of people selling cigarettes, but if cigarettes were not sold in machines but in a controlled environment like a tobacconist then they would, ironically, get more business.

The main point for me is that this is a seriously large loophole and it has to be closed.

Question: What do you think it says about British culture and British attitudes to smoking that it is relatively easy for young people to use vending machines?

Ian McCartney: It shows there is a long way to go. Ten years ago the cigarettes would have been sold at the bar, so we have come a very long way in Britain.

We have thousands and thousands of people every day stopping smoking and getting support from the NHS for doing so, and that's great.

For all the people who are stopping smoking we know that the tobacco industry is using vending machines to get new customers, not just because people are quitting.

The very powerful argument, as far as I'm concerned, is this: it's the only legal product in the world that you can buy that actually kills its customers. It kills them every day. The only way to get new customers is to recruit children, and how do you recruit them? You do it through vending machines.

Question: What is your overall aim regarding smoking and vending machines? What is your next step?

Ian McCartney: It is a bit like the original argument about banning smoking in public places. People said only ban it when you're having a meal, but none of that ever works. In the end people saw it didn't work.

There are no grey areas in this, the position is quite clear. This is major loophole and the only way to prevent people under 18 from getting around the law is to deal with these machines. They have to be banned.

Question: How important is this campaign?

Ian McCartney: The really important thing to get across is that you wouldn't allow vending machines to sell solvents to children, to sell fireworks to children, alcohol or knives.

All of those things, luckily, don't kill very many people, but when they do it is very, very sad indeed. Tobacco kills people in their thousands each and every day. They should not be allowed to sell cigarettes to children as young as 10 years of age in their thousands.

Some 46,000 young people use vending machines, some as young as 10 years of age, to get round the law. We've banned young people from being sold cigarettes to safeguard their health. Yet, because of vending machines, children as young as 10 are able to buy a cigarette and puff on it each and every day and it is not acceptable.