Nigel Farage says the Government’s planned ban on smoking in beer gardens will spell the end of the British boozer.
Speaking on GB News, Mr Farage told Bev Turner and Andrew Pierce there was a risk people would also look to buy tobacco on the black market.
Mr Farage told GB News: “I'm a pub goer, and it's interesting that our politicians are a strange bunch. You know, they're not very sociable, and very few in the House of Commons, I suspect, go into pubs. I love pubs because everyone's a Parliament. You know, we discuss local issues, national issues, and international issues. They're really important places.
"And back when smoking was banned indoors, pubs and clubs took a 20% financial hit. It's one of the contributors to 7000 of them closing over the last 20 years. If you ban people smoking in gardens and ban people smoking outside the front of pubs, that is the end of the British pub. It will be gone. No more boozers. There'll be restaurants that masquerade as pubs, but there will be no more pubs, and that's because, you know, quite a high proportion of pub goers enjoy the odd smoke as well.
"So I think it's a massive government overreach. I think it's an intrusion that is just a step way too far, because if you're outside, there's no reason why your smoke should affect anybody else at all.
"But I also think there's a danger here, and the danger is this, if you turn through regulation and through tax the price of a legal activity into effectively an illegal activity, you hand it straight to the criminal gangs. And this has happened in Australia. A pack of cigarettes in Australia is now the equivalent of 35 quid. So what has happened? What has happened is the black market in tobacco is now huge. No self respecting criminal dealer bothers with cocaine anymore.There's no money in cocaine. No, it's cigarettes. It's tobacco."
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