UK bans tobacco sales to anyone born after 2009 in generational smoking ban

Added: 2026-04-30

[00:00:00]These children are the smokeless generation. They will never be able to legally buy a cigarette in the UK after the British government passed a law making it illegal to sell tobacco to anyone born on or after January 1st, 2009.

[00:00:16]A law that is too late to help people like Sue. She survived cancer of the voice box three times. Her doctors blamed her smoking. I started as an 11-year-old.

[00:00:28]You know, it wouldn't have meant that I could get access to to cigarettes at all.

[00:00:34]I I just wouldn't be able to buy them. So, yeah.

[00:00:38]I would have saved me giving my family the news I had cancer if this law had been in when I was 11.

[00:00:46]More than 78,000 people die from smoking-related illnesses in England alone each year. And official data shows that every year on average more than 400,000 people go to hospital from illnesses caused by smoking. The impact is also financial. England's smoking habit costs the country more than $59 billion annually from loss of productivity to health and social care costs. The British government has said the new smoking ban is the biggest public health intervention in a generation and it will save lives. It also targets vaping giving the government new powers to control how vaping is marketed and sold including flavors and packaging to make it less attractive.

[00:01:31]But despite this historic ban, NGO Action on Smoking and Health says the government shouldn't stop there. We need the government to take forward all of those powers and action them. But we also need the government to do more for the for the 5 million people in this country that are still smoking. Um the bill is really great at protecting the next generation. Um but we've got to maintain investment and support particularly for disadvantaged groups that continue to smoke.

[00:01:58]A recent YouGov survey suggests most people support a widespread smoking ban.

[00:02:03]Though some younger Britons say the government is overstepping. [music] It's my body. If I want to smoke, I can smoke. If I want to drink, I can drink.

[00:02:11]I know the damages towards it because even on the packets where they sell it, they have very vivid and very explicit images on it. But that's still my choice whether to get or not. The new smoking and vaping regulations will come into force in January 2027.

[00:02:28]Kamal Medelec, Al Jazeera, Westminster, London.