Should everyone born after 2009 be banned from smoking? Poll of the week
MPs have voted on government plans to stop young people from ever smoking.
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Yahoo UK's poll of the week lets you vote and indicate your strength of feeling on one of the week's hot topics. After 72 hours the poll closes and, each Friday, we'll publish and analyse the results, giving readers the chance to see how polarising a topic has become and if their view chimes with other Yahoo UK readers.
The government's plan to ban young people from ever being able to legally smoke tobacco has cleared its first hurdle.
Rishi Sunak’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill passed by 383 votes to 67 – a majority of 316 – at its second reading in the House of Commons on Tuesday. This is the second of 11 parliamentary stages it must pass through to become law.
The Labour Party is supporting the proposed legislation, meaning there is no danger of the bill not being voted through.
The proposed legislation will make it illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone born after 1 January, 2009. This covers children who are currently 15 or younger.
It would not ban smoking outright as anyone who can legally buy tobacco now will be able to continue to do so if the bill becomes law.
It will also give the government new powers to clamp down on young people vaping, which include imposing restrictions on flavours and regulating the way they are packaged and sold to make them less appealing to children.
This poll has now closed.
Come back on Friday to read the results and analysis via the link below
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The public has previously indicated it would back a smoking ban. In a YouGov poll from September 2023, 71% of Britons said they would support raising the legal smoking age by one year each year. Only 17% opposed it.
Announcing the plans last year, Rishi Sunak said he was motivated by wanting to “build a better and brighter future for our children”.
The bill is strongly supported by health experts, though some prominent Tories have spoken out against it.
Among those are Sunak’s prime ministerial predecessors. In the Commons on Tuesday, Liz Truss claimed the ban is the result of a “technocratic establishment” aiming to “limit people’s freedom”, and described the bill as a “virtue-signalling piece of legislation”. Boris Johnson last week described it as “nuts”.
The government granted a free vote, meaning ministers such as business secretary Kemi Badenoch were able to vote against it without punishment. "We should not treat legally competent adults differently in this way," Badenoch said, "where people born a day apart will have permanently different rights.”
Smoking is the UK’s biggest preventable killer. According to official figures, the habit causes about one in four deaths from cancer and leads to 64,000 deaths in England per year.
According to the government, creating a “smoke-free generation” could prevent more than 470,000 cases of heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and other diseases by the end of the century.
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