Over the years, Canada has seen a steady stream of public-health measures relating to cigarettes, including graphic warnings on cigarette packages.ANDREJ IVANOV/AFP/Getty Images
Some are calling it the boldest public health move in generations.
Britain has just adopted the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, legislation to create a “generational smoking ban” by gradually cutting the number of people allowed to purchase tobacco.
Beginning in 2027, those born after Jan. 1, 2009, will no longer be allowed to buy cigarettes or other tobacco products and, going forward, the legal age will increase by one year annually.
Practically, that means that in 2037, no one under 28 would be able to buy a pack of smokes at the corner store, and that by 2050, store owners would be carding 41-year-olds, and so on.
Gradually, the thinking goes, young people will no longer take up smoking and the filthy habit/strangling addiction will fade away.
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Wes Streeting, Britain’s secretary of state for health and social care, said that going forward “young people will be part of the smoke-free generation, protected from a lifetime of addiction and harm.”
Smoking is a leading cause of preventable death, disability and ill-health, so fewer smokers should also ease some pressure on the health system, he added.
So why not just ban smoking altogether?
Largely because that would be really tough on the millions who are addicted. Not to mention that the state has helped facilitate that addiction with lax laws, and it’s addicted to the tax revenues.
The response to the new legislation has been fascinating.
First of all, in these politically polarized times, there has been surprising consensus across the political spectrum, with Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats all supportive of the approach.
There were, of course, some libertarian cries of “freedom,” arguing that people should be able to put whatever they want into their bodies.
Sir Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England, retorted that “cigarettes take choice away by addicting people and most smokers wish they had never started but are trapped.”
In fact, polls have shown that the most fervent supporters of the generational ban are smokers themselves. A British study found that three in four of them regret taking up the habit in the first place.
Research shows that most smokers start early and become hopelessly hooked at a young age. It’s notoriously difficult to kick a nicotine/smoking addiction.
The Canadian Cancer Society has advocated for a generational ban in Canada, but so far the government has shown little interest.
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Over the years, however, there has been a steady stream of public-health measures put in place, such as restricting smoking in the workplace, hiking tobacco taxes, introducing graphic warnings on cigarette packages, ending tobacco-company sponsorship of sporting and artistic events, outlawing advertising, banishing tobacco products from pharmacies and hiding them out of sight in corner stores, and banning smoking in bars, restaurants, patios, parks, beaches and so on.
Other measures proposed include reducing the nicotine content in tobacco, further limiting where it can be sold (similar to alcohol and cannabis), making tobacco prescription-only, and embracing a harm reduction approach by promoting vaping as an alternative.
Britain is not the first country to try the approach of phasing out smoking. The Maldives adopted similar legislation last year.
And New Zealand adopted an even harsher version of the generational ban in 2022, though the law was scrapped less than a year later, after a change of government.
That experience is informative.
New Zealand’s new, more conservative government, essentially dismissed the approach as impractical virtue-signalling, and said the only beneficiaries would be black-market smugglers.
While the law was popular with public health officials, it was bitterly opposed by convenience store owners, because the law would have also cut legal tobacco sales outlets to 600 from 6,000.
Another big loser was government itself. Tobacco taxes bring in a lot to state coffers, about $1-billion New Zealand dollars annually, and the country already has one of the lowest smoking rates in the Western world.
In Canada, $5.8-billion in tobacco taxes are collected annually – $2.6-billion federally and $3.2-billion provincially.
But smoking is also an enormous economic burden.
Smoking costs about $17-billion annually, including about $6-billion in direct health care costs.
About 48,000 Canadians die of smoking-related causes each year too.
A smoke-free generation would be a balm for our beleaguered health system, and economy.
Tobacco is, without question, the most deadly and harmful drug in the history of humanity. We owe it to ourselves to pull out all the stops to reverse its gruesome legacy, and spare future generations from its horrors.