The government may be planning to introduce strict new anti-smoking legislation.
According to a report by The Guardian, the government is considering new measures that would increase the legal smoking age every year.
The rumoured legislation is similar to that introduced in New Zealand in December 2022 which also increases the legal smoking age so that tobacco products will no be legally sold to anyone born after 1 January 2009.
The Guardian report stated that the measures would “ban the next generation from ever being able to buy cigarettes”. In New Zealand, tobacco products are sold through specialist stores rather than traditional outlets, however it is unclear if the UK government is considering similar measures.
The ONS data found that of the UK population in 2022, 12.9% of people aged 18 years and over, or around 6.4 million people, smoked cigarettes. People aged 25 to 34 years had the highest proportion of current smokers in the UK (16.3%) while those aged 65 years and over had the lowest (8.3%) in 2022.
2 Readers' comments