MPs voted this week to ban anyone aged 15 or younger in 2024 from ever buying cigarettes. If the legislation passes and is enacted, it would be a world first. Ben Quinn reports
Before 2007, going out on the town in the UK involved inhaling secondhand smoke – on trains, in restaurants, in clubs and in pubs. Even non-smokers would find that a stale tobacco scent could linger after an evening out. The ban on smoking indoors in public places changed things almost overnight.
Now with smoking rates among the population plummeting, the government is going a step further: it intends to ban the sale of tobacco to anyone born after 2009. To that age cohort onwards, the sale of cigarettes would be prohibited.
