The value of state paternalism gets inverted beyond a point—but what exactly is that point?

The duty did not work. Smoking spread from court to coffeehouses. Four centuries later, his constitutional descendants have decided to finish the job he started.

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill, passed by the British Parliament earlier this month, prohibits the sale of tobacco to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.

This cohort moves with time. In 2050, when those children are 41, a shopkeeper selling them a cigarette will be deemed a criminal. Their 42-year-old neighbours, born a fortnight before the cutoff, will face no such restriction.

Whatever else this is, it is among the most ambitious experiments in cohort paternalism ever attempted in a liberal democracy.

For Indians, this is not a distant quarrel. Article 47 of India’s Constitution instructs the state to “endeavour to bring about prohibition” of intoxicating drinks.

The Cinematograph Act of 1952 empowers a board not merely to certify films but censor them. The Food Safety and Standards Authority does more than demand disclosures, it forbids certain products. The Reserve Bank tells you what you may invest in abroad and up to what limit.

The state’s instinct, here as in the UK, is that citizens require guidance, and where that fails, legal restraints.

That some paternalism is justified isn’t in doubt. John Stuart Mill, who is everyone’s favourite anti-paternalist, conceded the ‘bridge case.’

An official may stop a man from crossing an unsafe bridge if there’s no time to warn him of the danger. From the bridge to the cigarette is a short walk, and from the cigarette to the carbs-and-oil-rich samosa shorter still. No modern state observes Mill strictly; perhaps none should. The harder question is where the boundary lies.

Three considerations help mark it.

First, the difference between absent consent and overridden consent. Joel Feinberg called these ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ paternalism. The soft kind intervenes when the citizen’s choice is not fully informed or voluntary; it demands warning labels, mandatory disclosures, default enrolment in pension schemes, etc. People are free to choose, but their choice is better illuminated. Hard paternalism overrides choices made by informed adults on the ground that the state knows what’s better for them.

The first is defensible. The second, except in the narrowest cases, is not.

Second, the difference between correcting market failure and judging preferences. The Securities and Exchange Board of India requires mutual fund advertisements to declare that investments are subject to market risks. This corrects an information asymmetry. It does not tell you what to buy. The Cinematograph Board, by contrast, decides what scenes you may watch. It makes preferences for you.

The first is regulation. The second is supervision of citizens as wards of the state.

Third, the test of reversibility. Auto-enrolment in the National Pension System, for example, would nudges citizens towards retirement saving while preserving the right to opt out. A graphic warning on a cigarette pack discourages smoking without banning it. Bihar’s 2016 alcohol ban cost the exchequer over ₹3,000 crore in revenue, produced a thriving illicit market and gave rise to recurring hooch tragedies.

A reversible policy is one the state can revisit when evidence demands it. An irreversible cohort ban is one the next generation must inherit, whether it consents or not.

A regulator that eschews paternalism need not give up rule-making. It would only need to recognize that citizens may be ignorant but that does not make them foolish.

Ignorance can be corrected but the informed choices of adults should be respected. To override these preferences, unwise as they may be, is to treat them as a means to the state’s preferred outcomes, rather than the authors of their own lives.

That is another objection to hard paternalism. It is older than Mill’s, going back to Imannuel Kant, and it can’t be countered by counting the lives a policy might save.

India’s food standards regulator could disclose risks without barring risky edibles and its film certification board could rate films without snipping them. The state could tax ‘sin consumption’ where it must, warn people where it can and trust adults to bear the consequences of their choices.

This is not about going laissez-faire. Think of pensions, pollution, financial fraud and communicable disease; there exist domains where the state must override the individual because others are harmed and the costs of failure are irreversible.

These are exceptions. But these must not harden into state instinct. Once the state assumes it knows better, the temptation to act on this assumption can be difficult to resist. The UK began with smoking. This precedent is likely to inspire other jurisdictions.

David Hockney, who has smoked since 16 and is now 86, put the underlying question pithily: “Their obsession with health is unhealthy.” He is wrong about cigarettes, but right about the fixation.

The Constitution that We the People adopted in 1950 envisaged a state that would lift citizens up. It did not envisage a state that would tuck them in.

The author is a public policy professional.