In August, after nearly a decade of abstinence, I took up smoking again. In the months since, I’ve been sparking up with the enthusiasm of a zealous new convert. But it seems the UK government is now determined to piss on my Rizlas, to burn my rediscovered pleasure to ash, and to wrench the roll-up from my tar-stained fingers.

This week, it was confirmed in the King’s Speech that a new Tobacco and Vapes Bill will be introduced. If successful, the law will ‘create a smoke-free generation by restricting the sale of tobacco so that children currently aged 14 or younger can never be sold cigarettes’. That would mean anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 will never be allowed to smoke – even when they turn 18. Arguably, this is part of a wider push by health-obsessed authoritarians to send personal freedom and responsibility up in smoke.

Grown adults should be allowed the choice to decide for themselves whether they want to take up the habit. Of course, no reasonable person can object to measures to stop kids from smoking. But once those kids reach adulthood, the choice should be all theirs. There is also something darkly comic about a future in which adults lurk outside corner shops, begging pensioners to buy them a packet of Marlboros.