Cigarettes and other smoking-related products are, as has been pointed out, things that can and will kill you even when used as directed. Not only does it kill, it causes many health problems not just for smokers but for those around them due to breathing in the smoke.
The IHME – in their annual Global Burden of Disease study – estimates that 8.7 million people die prematurely from tobacco use every year. As of November 2023, these are the latest estimates and refer to deaths in the year 2019. The references can be found in the footnote.
7.7 million of those deaths result from smoking, while 1.3 million are non-smokers who are dying because they are exposed to second-hand smoke. (An additional 56,000 people die annually from chewing tobacco.)
The unpleasant smell of smoke also penetrates into clothes and any permeable material so that as soon as one enters a room, one can tell if a smoker has been there.
However, thanks to massive marketing and the hiding of its negative effects, the tobacco industry has managed to create a large number of addicts. The industry has a massive army of lobbyists who work diligently to make sure that governments do not do more to curtail or ban their death-dealing industry. Banning smoking outright will not be easy because of the power of the lobby and those who will argue that it infringes on their personal freedom.
The tobacco industry targets young people because they know that if you get them hooked when young, then you will likely have them as customers forever. What the UK has done is to set in motion a process to try and prevent young people from ever taking up the habit, by moving to a steadily rising age to be able to purchase cigarettes, rather than a fixed age like 18 or 21.
A bill banning anyone born after 2008 from buying tobacco in the UK has completed its progress through parliament in a move that ministers hope will create a “smoke-free generation”.
Under the tobacco and vapes bill anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 will never be able to be legally sold tobacco across the UK, in an effort to save lives and reduce the burden on the NHS.
The bill will become legislation when it receives royal assent next week. Its long journey through both houses of parliament began when it was introduced on 5 November 2024 and ended on Tuesday, when the House of Lords approved amendments made by MPs in House of Commons.
Ministers hope it will end the sale of tobacco products altogether over time and break the cycle of addiction and the disadvantages associated with tobacco.
Here’s how the law will work.
From 2027, the minimum legal age for the sale of tobacco will increase by one year (from the current age of 18) every year. There will be a permanent generational line: everyone above it will still be allowed to buy cigarettes; everyone below it won’t. But over time the proportion of people allowed to smoke will become smaller and smaller as older citizens die – until one day no one in the UK will be able to legally buy cigarettes.
It’s quite a clever piece of legislation: rather than an outright ban that will result in conflict over rights with smokers now, it gradually reduces the number of those able to purchase tobacco products legally year by year, hopefully leading to further declines in smoking that happens invisibly. Public health researchers will be studying the impact of this legislation (a policy experiment and one of the first of its kind), and whether it could be a model to introduce in other countries and areas.
The law also extends the regulation of vapes – including their advertising and marketing to youth, and banning their use in playgrounds, public and commercial buildings and cars carrying children, and outside hospitals and schools. Despite an increasingly politically polarised climate, this law enjoys remarkable cross-party consensus, with strong support from Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat voters. Some of the strongest support for the legislation has come from smokers. Research carried out by YouGov in 2024 found that 52% of smokers supported raising the age of sale by one year every year and 78% of the public supported the idea of a smoke-free generation.
…Why would smokers support this policy? Perhaps it’s because they wish this legislation had been in place when they were younger: most people who smoke became addicted at a young age, with 90% of people who smoke starting before the age of 21. Many became addicted before they fully understood the health risks or how it would affect the quality of their daily lives. Understandably, polls tend to show that the vast majority of smokers regret starting. But quitting is notoriously difficult: it’s estimated that 80% of people who smoke have tried to quit, and struggled. Many of these smokers now know it’s killing them: two-thirds of deaths of female smokers in their 50s, 60s and 70s are linked to smoking, and smokers are estimated to die 10 years earlier than non-smokers.
The legislation will not criminalize smokers. Rather, it imposes penalties on those who sell the product to those under the age. So young people can still smoke but the hope is that the process to get cigarettes becomes so difficult that most will find it tedious and give up the effort.
The UK is not the first country to try this approach. New Zealand introduced such a law in 2022 but repealed it after less than a year, thanks to a new right-wing government and lobbying by the tobacco industry.
It won widespread public support, international praise from health advocates and inspired similar plans in the UK. But before the changes came into force, New Zealand’s new rightwing government unexpectedly scrapped it.
…The most vocal public protest came from convenience store owners – known as dairies in New Zealand – who were concerned the ban would gut their earnings and expose them to crime.
The tobacco industry also protested. An investigation by the broadcaster RNZ into one of the most visible anti-smokefree groups, Save Our Stores, found the campaign, which is designed to look like a grassroots movement, was being quietly backed by the tobacco companies British American Tobacco New Zealand and Imperial Brands.
The Maldives also introduced a version of this law a year ago and it is still in place.
You can be sure that the unscrupulous, morally bankrupt, and ethically challenged tobacco industry will fight this all the way, especially in the developing world that it sees as the place to increase their revenues as smoking rates in developed countries go down.
I hope this marks the beginning of a global trend that will eventually result in a smoking-free world.
In the 1930s German research revealed the great health risks of smoking, but the Nazi connection made it easy for the American tobacco industry to bury it.
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For more than 20 years they could expand a business model directly causing death by cancer [and chronic pulmonary wossname…the disease that requires lung transplants].
Yoicks ago, I read an sf novel by Daniel F. Galouye (Simulacron-3?) about a parallel world with tobacco-prohibition; cigarette addicts would gather in “smoke-easies” to enjoy their vice(s). It turns out (spoiler!) that their world was a social-simulation model in a computer; things got quite Philip K. Dickian from there on.
IIRC, the protagonists somehow broke their way through into the “real” world. Maybe I should look that story up again, since this world has seemed quite bogus for a while now, and an exit path sounds more appealing all the time.
birgerjohansson@1: You mean chronic obstructive pulmonary disease?
Aquaintance of mine died from this last year. He was in his early 60s. He was on the waiting list for a transplant, but of course that’s a slim chance.
He often said he wished he had stopped smoking 20 years earlier instead of at 50 when he was diagnosed with copd.
I never smoked myself but used to be more relaxed about other people smoking than I am now.
I started smoking when I was 14. At that time in my jurisdiction the legal age was 16, so when I turned 16 I quit since it wasn’t a rebellious thing to do anymore. As an adult I would occasionally join a friend in having a smoke, maybe 2 or 3 times a year. I no longer have any friends or relatives who smoke so it has been some years since I had a cigarette.
30 years ago when I was working 16 hours a day in film production, I found that a hit of nicotine at the 8 hour point would help me get through the rest of the shift. So I smoked one cigarette a day five days a week for a couple of months, then when the production wrapped, I didn’t smoke at all.
Carrying cigarettes with me was sometimes also helpful in doing my job: sometimes when filming on location there were homeless people hanging around in an area that was going to be on camera. Instead demanding that they move, I would offer cigarettes and share a smoke and a chat then casually mention that in the next in the next shot the camera would be looking their way. At that point they would voluntarily get up and move. Instead of being an authority figure ordering them around, I was a buddy they were happy to do a favour for.