Remember me
Two weeks ago, I mused in this column about when one truly becomes a grown-up. Thanks to new legislation, the answer regarding one traditional marker of adulthood will soon be “never”. The age at which Brits can legally buy tobacco, now 18, will rise year by year, with the effect that those born after 1 January 2009 will be banned from buying these items for their entire lives. Anyone born before need not worry – we will be able to carry on destroying our lungs as normal.
This policy, announced at the 2023 Conservative Party Conference by Rishi Sunak and brought to fruition by this Labour government, has skirted under the discourse radar. Maybe there’s too much else going on right now, or maybe its aim – to create a “smoke-free generation” – just seems too noble for sceptics to apply appropriate scrutiny. This is, after all, about the need to save lives and reduce pressure on the NHS.
The latter of these might set your Spidey-sense tingling, reminiscent as it is of the Covid-era “protect the NHS” messaging that seemed to get things the wrong way around. (Isn’t it the job of the health service to protect us?) Those who have dug into the grim economics of this issue might also question the premise that lives cut short by smoking are a net cost to the public purse rather than (in cold financial terms) a benefit, considering the decades of expensive treatment, social care and pension payments saved by dying at 60 as opposed to 90. Such calculations are a bleak and frankly sociopathic way to design healthcare policy. (I doubt we will ever see billboards reading: “Take drugs! Die early! SAVE THE NHS!”) But if policymakers are going to appeal to the public’s moral conscience by citing taxpayer savings, they should be wary of where their arguments lead.
It is not, however, the NHS klaxon that most concerns me about this incoming legislation. It’s the principle: that there can be different tiers of legal adults, with different rights, whom society is happy to treat differently. First, there’s the absurdity. Cast your mind forward to 2055 and picture a frazzled 46-year-old man lurking outside an off-licence, waiting for his 47-year-old mate to nab him a packet of fags. Imagine the mortification of a teenaged supermarket cashier asking the middle-aged woman old enough to be their mother for her ID. Mid-afternoon office snack runs will take on a new dimension: “I’m grabbing a packet of crisps, boss – um, do you want me to buy you a vape?”
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Proponents believe post-2009ers will go unbothered by any of this, because they will never have experienced that first seductive nicotine rush, and therefore will never learn to crave it. Such optimistic logic about the power of the law could be dispelled quickly by testing the Palace of Westminster – where the people who passed the righteous Tobacco and Vapes Bill reside – for cocaine residue. Smoking rates might well decrease (they’ve been falling dramatically for decades as it is), but inevitably some people will still succumb, and just as inevitably the UK’s existing black market in illicit substances and bootleg cigarettes will expand to fill the gaps created by the legislation.
Utopic dreams of a “smoke-free generation” will instead result in a generation deemed second-class citizens by the law. The message this sends should trouble anyone with a passing interest in civil rights: the precedent it sets – one rule for you and another for me – is outrageous. Smoking is certainly harmful, but enough to upend basic principles of equality under the law? If nicotine’s impacts are so devastating that today’s teenagers must be protected for life, so should their parents. (Sorry Angela Rayner, no more vaping for you.) But rights are politically harder to take away from people who already have them. So, here we are.
As a non-smoker, I’ve no skin – or skins – in this game. But I worry at how quickly civic conventions get brushed aside when one side can argue they’re saving lives. I’d be more concerned about saving democracy.
This article was updated on 30 April 2026 to clarify that vapes are not banned under the Tobacco and Vapes Act
[Further reading: Britain can’t afford to be middle class any more]
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This article appears in the 29 Apr 2026 issue of the New Statesman, The cover-up?