Children could be banned from buying cigarettes for LIFE under radical plans

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Children should be banned from ever being able to buy cigarettes and smoking should be banned from pub gardens, according to radical recommendations.

The age limit for purchasing cigarettes in England, currently set at 18, should rise by 12 months every year until no one can legally buy a tobacco product, a Government review has set out.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid tasked former children’s charity chief Javed Khan with finding ways England could be smoke-free by 2030 — defined as less than five per cent of people smoking, compared to the current 15 per cent.

However, the proposed policy, which is being rolled out in New Zealand and means anyone born after 2008 will never be able to buy cigarettes, is expected to be rejected by ministers.

Among the review’s 15 recommendations are proposals for the NHS to prescribe e-cigarettes and vapes to smokers. The NHS has been urged to ‘do more’ by giving quitting advice to smokers every time they see a medic.

The Government should make ‘the polluter pay’ by forcing the ‘dying’ tobacco industry pay an extra £70million in tax every year towards a £125million fund to support quitting and e-cigarettes on the NHS, the report states. 

It also calls for supermarkets and websites to be banned from selling tobacco, while retailers should be forced to apply for a tobacco license to limit where cigarettes can be sold.

All films and TV shows that show people smoking or other ‘tobacco imagery’ should be rated for people aged 18 and over, according to the report.

Other suggestions include paying expectant mothers to quit, branding cigarette sticks with how many minutes it shaves off of life and banning smoking in pub gardens and anywhere else food and drink is served outside.

The tobacco report is expected to go out to consultation before they are implemented.

Dr Khan said his recommendations, if implemented, would deliver a ‘smoke-free society’, save lives, save money and address health disparities. He called on ministers to make smoking ‘obsolete once and for all’.

But pro-smoking campaign group Forest said a ‘creeping prohibition’ won’t stop young people from smoking but instead drive the same of tobacco ‘underground’, forcing Britons to buy cigarettes on ‘the black market where no one pays tax and products are completely unregulated’.

And think tank the Adam Smith Institute labelled the report ‘nanny-statism on steroids’ and ‘illiberal nonsense’. 

Around 6million people smoke in the UK and it is behind 64,000 deaths every year. The NHS spends £2.4billion every year treating smoking-related conditions.

The Khan review found that England will miss its 2030 smoke-free target by at least seven years without action. And smoking rates in the poorest parts of the country will not fall below five per cent until 2044.

The report sets out four ‘critical recommendations’, including increasing the legal purchasing age from 18 ‘by one year, every year until no one can buy a tobacco product in this country’.

It also calls for an extra £125million to fund ‘easily accessible’ and ‘high quality that smokers need to help them quit’. 

This should include an extra £70million in stop smoking services which should be funded by making ‘the polluter pay’ through a tobacco industry levy or upping corporation tax ‘with immediate effect’ if the Government cannot foot the bill itself. 

Under the plans, doctors should promote vaping to patients as an ‘effective tool to help people to quit smoking tobacco’. 

‘We know vapes are not a “silver bullet” nor are they totally risk-free, but the alternative is far worse,’ the review states.

Dr Khan urged the NHS to ‘do more’ to help smokers by offering them advice and support to quit every time they come into contact with the health service, including through GPs, hospitals, psychiatrists, midwives, pharmacists, dentists and optometrists.

Dr Khan said: ‘A smoke-free society should be a social norm – but to achieve this, we must do more to stop people taking up smoking, help those who already smoke and support those who are disproportionately impacted by smoking. 

‘My holistic set of recommendations for government will deliver this, whilst saving lives, saving money and addressing the health disparities associated with smoking. ‘

‘My proposals are not just a plan for this government, but successive governments too. 

‘To truly achieve a smoke-free society in our great country, we need to commit to making smoking obsolete, once and for all.’

Mr Javid said the Government will ‘carefully consider’ the recommendations.

His review also sets out that the cost of tobacco duties should be increased by more than 30 per cent. This would target cheaper products, such as hand rolled tobacco, so they are treated the same as standard cigarette packs.

Dr Khan also called for tobacco licences for retailers to limit where tobacco is available, as well as a banning the products from being sold online and in supermarkets.

The report notes that the Netherlands is banning the sale of cigarettes in supermarkets from 2024. While Lidl and Aldi ‘are leading the way’ in the UK and do not sell cigarettes, ‘most supermarkets have not followed suit’. 

He said £15million per year should be given to local trading standards so they can close down retailers selling illicit tobacco and take more action on products such as shisha, which are ‘routinely sold with no regard for regulations’ but are often ‘ignored by enforcement agencies’. 

The report recommends ‘radically rethinking’ how cigarette sticks and packets look to reduce the appeal of smoking.

This could include mandating anti-smoking messages on cigarette sticks, such as the ‘minutes of life lost’ per cigarette and using ‘dissuasive colours like green or brown’ on sticks and hand rolling papers.

And films, TV shows and online media with tobacco imagery on screen should be classed as ‘unsuitable for viewing’ by under-18s and be broadcast after the 9pm watershed and include an on-screen health warning. 

More places, such as hospitality, hospital grounds and outdoor public spaces, should become smoke-free to ‘de-normalise smoking and protect young people from second-hand smoke’.

Dr Khan said it is time to reform health laws to ‘prohibit smoking on all premises where food and drink is served’. 

And at least 70 per cent of new social housing tenancies and developments should be smoke-free, the review states. 

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), said the report ‘sets out an ambitious vision’ to increase investment in tobacco control with tougher regulations, which are ‘essential to achieve a smoke-free 2030’.

She said: ‘This is what the public wants too – research by YouGov commissioned by ASH to provide evidence for the review shows a substantial majority support stronger government interventions to tackle smoking. 

‘Twelve billion pounds pours out of smokers’ pockets each year exacerbating the cost of living crisis in our poorest communities. Only by making smoking obsolete can the government deliver on its levelling up mission for health and wellbeing.’

The review also set out that ministers should invest £70million annually into stop smoking services every year, including updating stop smoking guidance, ensuring national helplines complement other services and encouraging employers to stop workers from smoking.

Some £15million per year should go towards mass medica campaigns that direct smokers to support and ‘dismantle myths about smoking and vaping’.

Another £15million should support pregnant women to quit, including support from the NHS, financial incentives to stop smoking — such as shopping vouchers — and employing a stop-smoking midwife in every maternity department.

On top of this, £8million should go towards ensuring public health directors set stop smoking targets and report results from their area, including a fund that integrated care systems bid for to access extra support.

And £2million should be put towards gathering data to identify evidence-based interventions that can be rolled out nation-wide. It would also go towards more research on smoking-related health disparities. 

Information should be issued on smoking and mental health, including advice that smoking does not reduce stress and anxiety. 

Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said smoking is the biggest cause of cancer, with a quarter of cancer deaths blamed on smoking.

She said:  ‘The scale of the issue is undeniable, yet England remains off track to become smoke-free by 2030, and for the most deprived this won’t be achieved until the mid-2040s.

‘This review provides the Government with the steps needed to close the health inequality gap and make smoking obsolete; it must now implement the recommendations. With bold action, we can save countless lives.’

But Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ group Forest, said: ‘Creeping prohibition won’t stop young adults smoking. It will simply drive the sale of tobacco underground and consumers will buy cigarettes on the black market where no-one pays tax and products are completely unregulated. 

‘A tobacco levy won’t hurt the tobacco companies because it will be passed on to the consumer, disproportionately affecting those from poorer backgrounds. 

‘Encouraging smokers to switch to reduced risk products such as e-cigarettes is sensible as long as it is voluntary and based on educating consumers about the relative risks of different nicotine products.’

He added: ‘Ultimately this is about freedom of choice and personal responsibility and ministers must think very carefully before they adopt prohibition and coercion as tools to achieve their smoke-free goal.’

And Daniel Pryor, head of research at Adam Smith Institute, said: ‘Aside from the welcome acknowledgement that the Government should double down on the success of vaping, the Khan smoking review is nanny-statism on steroids. 

‘Continually raising the smoking age every year is illiberal nonsense and would create a bizarre two-tiered system of adulthood. 

‘Do we really think 21-year-olds asking 22-year olds outside shops to buy cigarettes for them is a rational state of affairs? 

‘Moreover, plans to ban online sales and substantially increasing duties are regressive and are likely to hit those on the lowest incomes hardest; the very people that the review claims to be helping. 

‘Smokers need the carrot, not the stick.’

But Professor Sanjay Agrawal, chair of the Royal College of Physicians tobacco advisory group, who contributed to the UK review, said proposals to increase the legal age for buying tobacco every year would be ‘very welcomed’.

He told Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I think we need to do everything possible that we can to reduce the uptake of smoking in children.

‘We know that most people become addicted to tobacco in their teenage years and certainly before the age of 25 and we know that smoking prevalence in that age group is highest compared to all other age groups. 

‘Anything that we can do to reduce uptake is welcomed.’

Professor Sanjay Agrawal said the approach should be part of a ‘suite of measures’ that also helps current smokers to quit and for smoking to be made ‘less affordable and available’. 

He said that Britain has to take the opportunity to ‘support the next generation so they are not exposed to the harms of smoking’.

Professor Agrawal said: ‘I work in a hospital. My clinics are full sadly of people who come to harm from smoking, either with cancers, heart attacks, strokes, other lung diseases. 

‘The effect of smoking is still very prevalent and we need to do more to stop our youth from ever taking up that habit. And when I speak to smokers they regret ever having started.

‘We know smoking is an addiction and once you get hooked in it is very difficult to stop. Preventing it to begin with is by far the best way forward.’

The review has been plagued by repeated delays amid speculation its recommendations were met with pushback.

The minimum age for tobacco purchases was raised from 16 to 18 across Britain in 2007, when it also became illegal to smoke in enclosed spaces.

Officials followed up the measures in 2017 with a policy that meant all branded packaging had to be replaced with plain greenish-brown boxes. 

As well as controversially raising the legal age, the call for new taxes would come at a time when Boris Johnson has been urged to cut taxes to save his job.

The PM has vowed to get back to the ‘fundamental Conservative instinct’ of reducing the tax burden, after narrowly surviving a no confidence vote.

Last month he scrapped plans for a ban on multibuy junk food after being convinced that now was the wrong time to heap more costs on families already struggling with the cost of living crisis.

Sir Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, will attend the report’s launch today, along with health minister Maggie Throup and the shadow health minister Andrew Gwynne.

Industry sources have described its recommendations as ‘quite radical’. 

Smoking rates in the UK have fallen from about half of the population in the 1970s to just 15 per cent now. 

But use increased by 25 per cent among the under-30s during the pandemic, the equivalent of more than 600,000 new smokers.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said cutting cigarette use remained one of its top priorities.

But the Prime Minister is under pressure from all corners of his own party to move away from nanny-state and high tax policies.

Mr Johnson told the Cabinet yesterday he wanted to get back to his Tory instinct of cutting taxes as the next general election approaches.

He stressed to Cabinet colleagues that delivering tax cuts would help produce ‘considerable growth in employment and economic progress’. 

The PM also ordered ministers to bring forward new initiatives to slash Government spending in order to free up cash for tax cuts. 

Mr Johnson introduced a manifesto-busting national insurance hike in April to fund the NHS’ recovery from the pandemic.

His Government also brought in a windfall tax on gas and oil companies this month to soften the energy crisis for families.

A DoH spokesperson said: ‘Tackling issues such as smoking is a priority for the office for health improvement and disparities, and a key part of the government’s levelling up agenda. 

‘This is why we launched the independent review of our bold ambition to make England smoke-free by 2030.

‘The review will provide independent, evidence-based advice on potential interventions that will inform our approach to tackling the stark health disparities associated with tobacco use – and we look forward to seeing the report in due course.’