UK plans to ban smoking for good passes first hurdle

The British government wants to ban smoking in important places to stop young people from starting to smoke. The plan passed the first step in Parliament on Tuesday, even though some people in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party don’t agree with it.

Sunak announced a new law last year that would make it against the law to sell tobacco to people born after January 1, 2009. If the bill is approved, Britain will have some of the strongest laws against smoking in the world. Officials say it will make a new generation of people in Britain who do not smoke.

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill says that kids who are 15 or younger will not be allowed to buy tobacco. Officials want to increase the legal age to buy cigarettes in England by one year each year until it becomes illegal for everyone to buy them. They hope to achieve this by 2027.

The law also stops young people from vaping. It makes it illegal to sell cheap throwaway vapes and limits the flavors, so kids can’t get hooked on nicotine.

Selling cigarettes, tobacco products, and vapes to anyone under 18 is against the law in the UK.

On Tuesday, the lawmakers voted 383 to 67 to continue discussing the bill after talking about it all afternoon. Even though many health experts and the Labour Party supported the bill, Sunak faced opposition from some members of his own party who thought the proposals were not conservative.

Conservative lawmakers were allowed to vote however they personally wanted instead of having to follow the rules of their party.

Critics, like the smokers’ rights group FOREST, said the change could make a black market and will make it harder for adults. Some important people in the Conservative Party, like Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, said the plans are not in line with conservative values because they limit personal freedoms.

Truss said the bill was trying to show good intentions but didn’t really do much to help adults in the future. She said this during a debate in Parliament on Tuesday.

Other well-known members of the Conservative party, like the business secretary Kemi Badenoch, who is also a Cabinet minister, did not support the bill.

The plans were thought to have been inspired by similar ideas from New Zealand, but the new government in that country cancelled the plans earlier this year.

The government said that smoking will not be made illegal. People who can buy cigarettes now will still be able to buy them in the future.

The number of people who smoke in the UK has gone down by two-thirds since the 1970s. But there are still about 6. 4 million people in the country who smoke, which is about 13% of the population. These are official numbers.

Officials say that smoking leads to around 80,000 deaths each year in the UK, and is still the main reason for death, disability and bad health that can be avoided.