Health Bill [HL]

I support the amendment, but I confess that as a child I was in love with vending machines. I do not know whether any noble Lords can remember those rusting and out-of-use Cadbury vending machines on railway stations. My mother used to say that before the war you could get a bar of chocolate out of those machines for a penny. I do not know whether that gave me a lifelong aversion to war, but I certainly remember vending machines very fondly. The love affair continued into my medical student days when often the only cigarettes available late at night, when one had finished work, were from a vending machine. They were usually Embassy, and they were awful, but they were from a vending machine somewhere in a dark back street. So I support what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours said. If you want to give up, you can always find a cigarette somewhere, and a vending machine is usually the source. I support the amendment because children, as we have heard, find it very easy to get cigarettes from vending machines. I should add another point; I knew a teenager who used to brag about how he could get two packets for the price of one, because he was good at operating the drawer of the vending machine. He never taught me how to do it, as I had given up smoking long before then. Young teenagers find vending machines a challenge, and they brag about how they can get stuff out of them. There is no need. If an adult wants to get his cigarettes and it is late at night, our shops do not close at 5.30 any more. There are even shops that operate for 24 hours. You can always get whatever you want at any time of day. There is therefore no excuse to have something that is so dangerous to people’s health available from a vending machine. I support the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, in her remarks about condoms. I well remember, as a local councillor, trying to introduce a condom vending machine in our local college. The opposition to that was tremendous: it would pollute our youth, it would make them ill; I do not know what else a condom vending machine would do to them. But, of course, cigarette machines were easily available all over the borough. I rest my case.