Rishi Sunak is considering introducing some of the world’s toughest anti-smoking measures that would in effect ban the next generation from ever being able to buy cigarettes, the Guardian has learned.
Whitehall sources said the prime minister was looking at measures similar to those brought in by New Zealand last December. They involved steadily increasing the legal smoking age so tobacco would end up never being sold to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.
Stopping cigarette companies giving away packs of 5 outside colleges if you could prove you were over 16 was a sensible progressively restrictive law that followed to them not being displayed in shops and having warnings in the packets for example.