In between hours spent singing songs and swinging on swings, my strongest memory of preschool is how fervently all the adults spoke against smoking. They weren’t out to scare us, and it wasn’t preachy. Well, I suppose they were trying to indoctrinate us! But it was never, “Don’t do this or else!!” It felt more like another one of the many things we were learning, just a bit more serious than the names of shapes. I remember my five-year-old self thinking, “Wow, they really mean it about this smoking thing.” And I guess because I was a teacher’s pet very dedicated student (and my contrarian streak hadn’t manifested yet), the tactic of hook ‘em while they’re young into NOT smoking worked on me. I’ve never smoked and am truly thankful, because I’ve listened to people describe how unbelievably hard it is to quit.
Well, last week the UK government signed off on a smoking ban that makes my preschool’s methods look like the pee wee leagues. Under the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, starting next year it will be illegal to sell smoking products to anyone born in or after 2009. Meaning 18-year-olds will no longer be able to buy cigarettes or vapes, for life, eventually leading to a smoke-free Britain. Here are the details:
The law, which would make it an offense to sell tobacco, herbal smoking products, or cigarette paper to someone born in or after 2009, will apply in the United Kingdom’s four constituent countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
The bill expands existing laws on smoke-free premises to make them vape-free. Vaping in cars with passengers under 18 would be prohibited, as well as in playgrounds, outside schools, and at hospitals. Outside hospitals, however, vaping would still be allowed to support those trying to quit.
The bill will also empower ministers to regulate the flavors, packaging, and display of vapes and nicotine products. Advertising for smoking and vaping products will also be broadly banned. Managing or controlling vending machines with vapes or nicotine products is also an offense, unless in mental health hospitals mainly for inpatients. The U.K. already only permits persons aged 18 and up to buy vapes.
As part of increased oversight, the bill also provides powers to introduce a licensing scheme for the retail sale of tobacco and herbal smoking products, vapes, and nicotine products in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Violators in England and Wales could face fixed penalty notices, where payment of the fine within a specific time means they could avoid court. The fine is £200 (about $270) for minor infractions, and could go up to £2,500 (about $3,300) for offenses in connection with retail licenses.
According to a policy document published in 2024 about the bill, the age of sale restrictions for tobacco will come into force in January 2027, while other measures introduced through regulations will have separate enforcement dates.
More than 5 million people aged 18 and up smoke in the U.K., latest statistics show, with the largest proportion coming from the 25- to 34-year-old age group.
Smoking is a leading cause of preventable illness and death in the U.K., according to the NHS, which reported in 2019, more than 74,000 deaths in England were attributed to smoking among adults aged 35 and up. According to the House of Commons Library, there were more than 400,000 hospital admissions due to smoking between 2022 and 2023.
Smoking also impacts the U.K. economy negatively, according to Action on Smoking and Health, an advocacy group established by the Royal College of Physicians. Lost economic productivity and associated health and social care costs in England because of smoking add up to £43.7 billion (about $59 billion) and rise to £78.3 billion (about $100 billion) when factoring in the cost of smoking-related early deaths.
New Zealand passed a ban like this back in 2022, but it never went into effect after a conservative government was elected and killed the bill, something some English conservatives have promised to do as well. Nigel Farage had a predictably outraged op-ed in the Telegraph last month full of hot air, in which he puzzled over how “Ten years from now, a 27-year-old will not be legally able to buy cigarettes, but a 28-year-old will be able to.” Yes, Nigel, that’s how dates and aging work. Not that I think this bill will magically cure everyone’s smoking habits. It won’t, and as an American I can’t help but think of Prohibition and worry about what kind of mob-run bootlegging operations this ban might spawn. So I’m very interested to watch how this unfolds, because a smoke-free society is worth enacting sweeping change for.
Photos credit Cottonbro Studios and Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels, Tom Wichelow/Avalon
In California, they banned all flavored tobacco, including menthols and cloves. All flavors of vape were also banned except for tobacco flavor.
There’s definitely smuggling. I see people with them all the time. 🤷🏻♀️
Teen and pre-teens will be able to get cigarettes the same way they do now, same way underage kids get alcohol. But geez, you’ve got to try something I suppose.
I had heard some rumblings recently about Canada thinking about something like this that it was very early stages.
My parents in the 1980s when I was a teenager went entirely in the other direction. They basically said “Smoke if you want to! We’d rather you did that than all kinds of crazy drugs.” That, of course, took all the forbidden thrill out of it and so I never did. They were very crafty.
I am from the UK and I am delighted with this. Smoking is so harmful and dangerous for the individual and wider society. With the recent attempts to glamorise smoking again (swear I have seen more young celebs smoking in magazines recently, didn’t Kylie Jenner do one recently?) I am glad the government is doing something to prevent new generations from taking up this harmful, expensive and addictive habit. Nigel Farage can get bent!
I am an elder millennial and spent my childhoood with heavy smokers (friends of my mother and relatives) half of them developed smoke related illnesses. My mother in law (French) is a heavy tobacco smoker but besides her , and we see her once every year, we are blessed not to be around tobacco/pot smokers or vapers. I guess due to childhood over exposure to smoke I developed an allergy to it and cannot tolerate it. I even avoid period movies/sitcoms as I find annoying seeing chain smoking.
A dumb politician in my adopted homeland made accessible the access to pot (he loves it) and it’s sad to see teenagers and young people smoking or vaping it because they wronly think is more “natural” than tobacco.
I am an elder Millennial, never liked smoking: it’s not cheap and you stink.
I lost my mum to throat cancer because of this, If I never liked this habit before, now I hate it. Don’t come near me with cigarettes.
I think its disgusting that smoking is making a comeback in movies and on tv. I’d like to know how much the tobacco lobby is paying. I very much welcome these laws
I mean, it causes more deaths than weed, which is illegal, so it makes sense to me.
I grew up with a two pack a day father. He grew up in RJR Reynolds country and was hooked on cigarettes from the time he was a young teen. He tried to quit a couple of times but it was pretty hopeless at that point. I had asthma (maybe because he smoked?) so I never could or really wanted to pick up the habit. So I am all for measures to stop people from ever taking it up.
That said, I am a little wary of a total ban. It’s hard to enforce when an industry and habit is as entrenched as smoking tobacco is. And people don’t like to be told what they can and can’t do with regards to their own bodies. But I can’t blame them for trying.
It’s an interesting approach. Before smoking bans started in the 90s, we could never have imagined smoke free public spaces. But now that’s the norm. This could work.
Good! This is one area where the US seems to be doing better than a lot of other places. I was in Lisbon and Madrid last fall and would have so many nice moments ruined by the amount of people smoking around me. My daughter said the same thing happened in Costa Rica. Smoking is awful for the people who do it and anyone around them (I hate it when I end up on an elevator with people coming in from a smoke break) and it’s a major public health issue. It needs to just be banned.
it was the one thing my kids hated about Paris last summer – all the cigarettes.
I used to smoke regularly (I think at my peak I was smoking a pack a week), and a semester in Spain was really what get me into it. I remember being at the airport waiting to fly home, smoking a cigarette, putting it out on the floor (like everyone else did) and boarding the plane. Because we were just smoking around the gate.
I’ve long since quit and it is so nice to be able to go to a bar and hang out and not come home stinking like smoke, or to go somewhere like a concert or the zoo etc and not smell.
I’m interested in how this will play out in the UK, but its a good start.
Watched my youthful FIL die from COPD last year. In a world without cigarettes he easily had another 15 years to live. Though he was also an alcoholic so maybe 10.
Once you start to go downhill on COPD (there is no reversing it) it is quite miserable. I didn’t understand until close to his death that the main problem is you can breath in but you struggle to breath out. You can develop “barrel” chest.
My school age children will likely never touch a vape or cigarette after watching him die.
I dunno. I don’t like this. A bit too big-brothery for my taste.
Don’t get me wrong, smoking is nasty. And I fully support laws that make it really difficult and/or very expensive (fines) to sell to minors, laws that ban it in public in and near buildings, etc.
But I’m also pro-legalization of other things, like marijuana and psilocybin. I want all these things to be highly regulated for sure. But an outright ban is too much. Autonomy is important here. People should be able to make their own decisions, terrible or not.
Plus, black markets exist.
@Drea – Those other substances don’t endanger non users in the same way as tobacco. The tobacco bans in the US focusing on bars and restaurants also acknowledged that the majority of food service workers are women who were exposed to those substances 40 hours a week.
I agree that prohibition is wrong and doesn’t work. But removing tobacco from the mainstream will save the lives of people who work in food service or live in apartments with shared ventilation, who have historically not had autonomy to be safe from second hand smoke.
I agree with removing it from the mainstream, that’s what I’m saying.
Where I live, it’s illegal to smoke or vape in shared buildings or near building entrances and in many open public places, including all apartment buildings, there are high fines for selling to minors, it’s illegal to smoke in cars with minors present, flavored vapes are illegal, etc. I’m sure there’s more, and I’m great with that. As a result, there aren’t many smokers or vapers, which is great. I realize it’s different in different locations, but these laws have been very effective here.
And yes, I understand the dangers of first, second, and third-hand smoke. It’s awful.
I think this deserves all the credit. This a great way to encourage a smoke-free life for the upcoming generation, same as we all (I hope) have come to appreciate the fact that you know you won’t be inhaling someone’s smoke while sitting inside somewhere. I really noticed this not being the case when I was abroad recently, and I really hated breathing in smoke through no desire of my own. If it stops even 25% of youths who would start smoking to not do so because it’s just a bit more inconvenient then it’s going to be transformative, for them and for other parts of society like the NHS.
That is discrimination based on age….
Why not impose a 500% taxe on it for everyone?
Great post and great news! Smoking and vaping tobacco adds nothing to anyone’s life; only detracts, sickens, creates waste and litter, and even hurts unborn children. I’m all for getting rid of it.
Because banning drugs worked so well. #sarcasm