Why do Lib Dems want to crack down on smoking but legalise Cannabis?
Whether it is tuition fees or local development, the Lib Dems are generally not known for their consistency.
Trust me, I campaigned for them during the coalition years. This week, things took an almost surreal turn. Party leader Sir Ed Davey, along with his deputy and health spokesperson Daisy Cooper and three other colleagues, voted in favour of Rishi Sunak’s age-dependent tobacco and vapes ban.
Perhaps in these turbulent political times we should just be grateful that the party remains consistently inconsistent
That might seem odd enough from supposed liberals – whatever happened to personal choice and adult informed consent? However, Davey, Cooper and co. are also MPs from a party that supports the legalisation of cannabis. That party’s 2019 manifesto read:
‘Liberal Democrats will take a different approach, and reform access to cannabis through a regulated cannabis market in UK, with a robust approach to licensing, drawing on emerging evidence on models from the US and Canada.’
Davey was deputy leader heading into the election and that is the manifesto he and the rest of his MPs campaigned on. There has been no public revoking of the above policy in the years since. The whole thing is highly contradictory.
As it happens, some hardy liberal souls in Davey’s party did not march through the ‘Aye’ lobby, declining to vote at all. Amongst them were former leader Tim Farron and justice and home affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael. However, the leader and his health spokesperson have made their point. Speaking during Tuesday’s debate in the House of Commons, Cooper said:
‘The Government proposals on vapes are an absolute no-brainer and are consistent with Liberal Democrat party policy that was adopted at our conference last year, including the ban on single-use vapes on environmental grounds.’
Hmmm. Perhaps in these turbulent political times we should just be grateful that the party remains consistently inconsistent. One might argue that there is evidence of health benefits to cannabis that does not exist for tobacco or vapes. The 2019 manifesto does assert that the party’s ‘approach will support and encourage more clinical trials of cannabis for medicinal use to establish a clear evidence base.’ However, that is only part of the case made by the Lib Dems for its cannabis policy.
Voting for the ban is still odd given that one policy increases personal choice and the other limits it. Attempting to explain the party’s position, a spokesperson commented:
‘Liberal Democrat policies always have people’s freedom and well-being at their heart, and are based on the evidence of what works. We are consistent on that, whether it’s tackling cancer through public health measures or reforming outdated laws that cause young people so much harm.’
As it happens, I have next to no interest in either cannabis, vapes or cigarettes. Sorry, I’m rather dull. But I do believe in freedom of choice, and it seems impossible to me that you can coherently support allowing one and banning the other, however contort yourself on health grounds.
Whatever the individual reasons each MP had for voting or not, the incident demonstrates the tension in the Lib Dems between the liberal elements of the party its more social democratic, statist wing.
The rift within the Lib Dems on these issues goes beyond the green benches
Oddly, Davey is generally considered to be from that more classically liberal faction and his liberalism is, in my limited personal experience, profound and sincere. Perhaps the party has polling suggesting the ban is popular. Perhaps the nagging urge to ban things you don’t like proved just too hard to resist. (It should be noted that Davey tragically lost both his parents to cancer, although this was not linked to smoking.)
The rift within the Lib Dems on these issues goes beyond the green benches. One of the party’s councillors, Simon McGrath, raised the issue on Twitter and told me his party’s stance is ‘a classic illustration of the problems of voting for something now that won’t come until for a number of years. If they had had to vote on all the practical details about how the ban would work, I suspect they would have seen the absurdity.’
The Lib Dems do often have the luxury of advocating both for the absurd and things that they will never have to implement. They can vote on ‘vibes’ not substance, knowing that someone else will usually have to sort it out. Although, as a former cabinet minister, Sir Ed knows the difficulties that occur when his party does have to put things into place and should probably have learnt that it is worth thinking these things through a bit. Because there can be little doubt that this tobacco and vapes policy, with its arbitrary age restriction that will afford one set of adults more choice than another, will have huge implementation problems. The Lib Dem leadership better hope that the polls don’t narrow to the point where their presence is required in a government that has to put the ban into practice.
Since 2010, the Liberal Democrats have been taunted for being inconsistent and principle free. The party leader being in favour of one commonly smoked substance but not another does not seem a to be great way to go about fixing that.
