“Plans to stop young people born since 2009 ever smoking are being debated and will be voted on later. Rishi Sunak’s bill aims to create the UK’s first smoke-free generation in a major public health intervention. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill would ensure anyone turning 15 from this year would be banned from buying cigarettes, and also aims to make vapes less appealing to children. A number of Tory MPs have told the BBC they won’t back the bill.
The BBC understands that Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch is considering voting against the plans. Conservative MPs will get a free vote on it so they won’t be ordered to vote with the government, but the bill is likely to pass as it has Labour support. The bill would make the sale of tobacco products, rather than the act of smoking, illegal. Tobacco use is the UK’s single biggest preventable cause of death, killing two-thirds of long-term users and causing 80,000 deaths every year.
Proposed new legislation announced on 4 October by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, will make it an offence for anyone born from 1 January 2009 to be sold tobacco products—effectively raising the legal smoking age by a year each year until it applies to the whole population.”