Plans to stop young people born since 2009 ever smoking are being debated and will be voted on later.
Rishi Sunak’s bill aims to create the UK’s first smoke-free generation in a major public health intervention.
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill would ensure anyone turning 15 from this year would be banned from buying cigarettes, and also aims to make vapes less appealing to children.
A number of Tory MPs have told the BBC they won’t back the bill.
The BBC understands that Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch is considering voting against the plans.
I find the second hand effects argument a difficult one to swallow when we deal with car pollution, industrial waste, microplastics, and so much more on a minute to minute basis. Anyone who lives in a city has essentially no reasonable expectation of overly clean air.
Public spaces are just that—public—and there should not be an expectation of being insulated from every harmful output by your fellow citizens, within reason. I’d take the errant cigarette waft over a bus station fart any day.
I’d support banning or heavily penalizing those things too, FWIW.