Exclusive: Sources say law could gradually increase smoking age to ultimately prevent sales to people born after certain year

Rishi Sunak is considering introducing some of the world’s toughest anti-smoking measures that would in effect ban the next generation from ever being able to buy cigarettes, the Guardian has learned.

Whitehall sources said the prime minister was looking at measures similar to those brought in by New Zealand last December. They involved steadily increasing the legal smoking age so tobacco would end up never being sold to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.

  • @[email protected]
    5•1 year ago

    Did you read the article? The legislation steadily increases the legal age limit so that kids don’t get hooked on tobacco in the first place. No one will have to “quit cold turkey”.

    One of the biggest issues with the war on drugs is that it criminalizes the use of certain drugs. This doesn’t do that.

    As for your claim about a black market and a mafia:

    we have already taken steps to reduce smoking rates. This includes providing 1 million smokers in England with free vape kits via our world-first ‘swap to stop’ scheme

    They’re still providing people with tobacco, just a less-deadly kind. Comparing that to the war on drugs is ridiculous. The point of the war on drugs isn’t to get people to quit using dangerous drugs recreationally, every reasonable person wants that. The point of it is to control minorities and poor people. That’s absolutely not what’s happening here.

    None of this is to defend Sunak btw, he’s a broken clock that happens to be right in this instance.

    • quadropiss
      1•1 year ago

      You left out the part where kids get tobacco anyways and this will just make it unsafe for them and that WILL cost their lives. It WILL kill someone’s child.

      Btw war on tobacco is war on drugs. Tobacco is a drug. Making it irrelevant in people’s minds is the way, not formally banning it