The new UK Government led by Keir Starmer has set out plans to introduce a generational smoking ban and stricter controls on vapes and other nicotine products in its legislative agenda for the year.
The Tobacco and Vapes bill was included in today’s King's Speech, a Westminster tradition where the King - Charles III - reads a speech prepared by the Government which sets out its legislative agenda for the year.
“A Bill will be introduced to progressively increase the age at which people can buy cigarettes and impose limits on the sale and marketing of vapes”, according to the speech delivered by the 75 year-old Monarch.
No one currently under the age of 14 would be legally allowed to be sold cigarettes, according to the proposed law, which would also include new powers for UK Ministers to regulate the flavour, packaging and display of safer nicotine products like vapes or nicotine pouches.
The proposals came initially from the previous Conservative Government under Rishi Sunak. But when Sunak called a snap general election in May, the plans were shelved due to insufficient Parliamentary time to complete the legislative process.
Labour campaigned on a manifesto which promised to bring back the Bill, and the now Health Secretary Wes Streeting has previously been skeptical about safer nicotine products.
The New Nicotine Alliance, a consumer group in the UK, wrote to the new Government earlier this month, asking the government to consider the benefits that safer nicotine products have for adults.
”Smokers and vapers would like the government to tread more lightly on their lives”, reads the letter. “They want to see public health policy work by consent rather than coercion and for the government to be a respectful enabler, not a hectoring prohibitionist. A policy encouraging smokers to make their own choices to switch to safer products is respectful, ethical and pragmatic – and far more likely to work”.
The Government was quick to defend the bill, with Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty saying:
“A smokefreecountry would prevent disease, disability and premature deaths long into the future. Smoking causes harm across the life course from stillbirths, asthma in children, cancers, strokes, heart attacks and dementia. Most smokers wish they had never started. Second hand smoke causes harm including to vulnerable people. The Bill to create to a smokefree country in the King’s Speech would be a major step forward in public health.”
