Rishi Sunak stood glowering over a school table and listed, with disdain, the flavours of the vapes that lay on the table in front of him. ‘Grapefruit,’ the Prime Minister declared. ‘Bubblegum. Strawberry. Berry Burst.’ Pupils at Haughton Academy were then invited to express their own disgust: ‘Bright colours,’ observed one student. ‘Appealing to younger people,’ said another.

‘Do you think that’s right?’ the Prime Minister asked the circle of 13- and 14-year-olds. ‘No,’ they dutifully answered. Sunak told the students, in a video posted to his Instagram account, that the ‘good news’ is that he is announcing a full ban on disposable vapes and a crackdown on packaging and flavours that might be particularly popular with the young.

The question is whether someone’s after-­dinner cigar or trip to the shisha café is anyone else’s business

What he failed to mention is that the vapes he brought in for show-and-tell are already illegal for children to buy.

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will, in addition to restricting vapes for adults, make it illegal for anyone born after January 2009 to purchase cigarettes. The ban could also apply to cigars, shisha, tobacco pouches and heated tobacco products. It’s expected to come to parliament this month, and – given the wide support for the ban across all major parties – there is a chance that it will be passed without serious debate.

The plan was first announced by Sunak at Conservative party conference last year. It was strange timing – the Leader of the House, Penny Mordaunt, had just called on party activists to ‘stand up and fight for the things upon which the progress of humanity depends: freedom’. But it seems people have been enjoying some freedoms a bit too much. Too many people choose cherry-flavoured vapes for the government’s liking.

It’s difficult to take away established rights and legal products from adults who already enjoy them. What this government plans to do instead is to take them away from those who are less likely to complain. You don’t miss what you never knew.

The original plan to mandate a ‘smoke-free generation’ was the brainchild of Jacinda Ardern, who was going to impose this type of phased ban in New Zealand. Her idea was immediately scrapped by the new right-wing coalition government, which has pledged to use the income from cigarette duty to cut taxes elsewhere. Britain now stands alone in planning to phase out smoking completely.

The Prime Minister will no doubt be looking at the polls, which show the popularity of illiberal policies. Even the most meddling politician would have struggled to propose a smoking ban before the pandemic. But the public became used to heavy-handed interventions such as lockdown. It turned out there was widespread support for relinquishing personal freedom and responsibility and handing control to government. There still is: a poll at the end of last year showed that roughly a quarter of respondents want nightclubs shut and a cap of six people for social gatherings.

It wasn’t so long ago that, as chancellor, Sunak privately lamented invasive lockdown restrictions. It wasn’t a minister’s job to determine whether a scotch egg constituted a ‘substantial meal’, he thought. But now it will be his ministers deciding whether the public should be allowed cola- or strawberry-flavoured vapes. ‘How do I get on that committee?’ quips one Tory MP.

When the economy is stagnant, and a cost-of-living crisis rages on, why pick this fight? Smoking is already dying out. Smoking rates are at their lowest levels on record, especially among the young. And the ban would almost certainly be unenforceable in any case. Any further restrictions are more likely to push the dwindling number of smokers towards the black market, which supplies one in ten cigarettes smoked in Britain. Expect that number to rise if there’s no way for future adults to legally purchase tobacco products.

More important than any single piece of evidence is that adults should have the right to make personal choices about how they live their lives. Smokers will die younger on average, but this is a risk they are informed about on every cigarette packet. Since the ban on smoking in indoor public places was implemented, that risk has largely become a private choice, and personal lifestyle choices are not the government’s concern. It’s not simply smoking that MPs are about to phase out of existence, but the principle that a person should be allowed to determine his or her own destiny.

It’s absurd that in a few decades, a 45-year-old will be allowed to legally buy cigarettes and a 44-year-old banned. But the real question is whether someone’s after-dinner cigar or trip to the shisha café is anyone else’s business. In wartime Britain, Churchill said his ‘rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and the intervals between them’. The only thing sacred in Whitehall today is the National Health Service, but not even its protection can be used to justify a smoking ban: the £10 billion tax revenue from cigarettes more than offsets the cost of treating smoking-related diseases.

That ‘sacred rite’ is being extinguished based on the personal tastes of members of the government. Once it is, what else might follow? Sunak has made clear that his bans stop at smoking. ‘There is no safe level of smoking,’ he claims, unlike food and drink consumption, where he says ‘I firmly believe in people’s right to choose’. (The Prime Minister personal preference is to fast for 36 hours a week.)

This ban will deprive 18-year-olds, then 35-year-olds and, one day, 90-year-olds of personal choice

It’s not obvious that the party 27 points ahead in the polls sees it that way: foods high in calories, fat or salt might be viewed by Labour as just as easy a target as flavoured vapes. Only last month, Sir Keir Starmer declared he is ‘up for the fight’ to defend ‘the nanny state’, as the party looks into banning certain food adverts before the watershed. There’s a fiscal incentive for this as well: Labour needs to find the cash for its many promises, and while the sugar tax introduced under the May government has had no impact on obesity rates (as was predicted), it has provided a boost to the Treasury. The continued purchase of sugary drinks had led to an increase in revenue every year since the tax was introduced – £355 million in the last financial year.

This won’t be the nanny state as we’ve known it. Labour will have a new mechanism, created by the Tories: a two-tier system of rights where, based on an arbitrarily selected age, some adults will have full consumer rights while others have them curbed. Backers of the smoking ban insist this is a policy that protects children. But there are laws already in place to stop tobacco sales to children. This ban will deprive soon-to-be 18-year-olds, then 35-year-olds and, one day, 90-year-olds of personal choice.

Britain developed many modern ideals of liberty. This is a worthwhile legacy to uphold, though sometimes a difficult one. Defending liberty can mean defending ‘bad’ things: the right to offend, to drink, to get fat, to vape, to smoke. Who will mount that defence when the Bill is debated this month? Polls show the smoking ban is almost as popular as lockdowns were. This thrills some Tories, who have not had a popular policy for a long time (it seems it’s easier to take away the rights of young people than it is to build them some homes), but polls are a dangerous metric when it comes to granting or revoking liberties. Respect for individual autonomy has long been a necessary feature of democracy. With this ban, MPs across the parties will vote to erode that respect.

‘Liberty means responsibility,’ said George Bernard Shaw. ‘That is why most men dread it.’ The Conservative party is supposed to champion the notion of freedom. It has slowly come to dread it instead.