The United Kingdom plans to officially ban smoking, as confirmed in the King’s Speech.
King Charles III (74) announced Tuesday, November 7 during his first taking to the throne following the death of Queen Elizabeth II last year, what the UK government’s business plan is for the year.
Details revealed in the King’s Speech included the policies Rishi Sunak and his cabinet hope to enforce before the next election sometime in the next 12 to 14 months.
The move to ban smoking in the UK comes after New Zealand announced plans to become a ‘smoke-free’ country by 2025, two years away as of writing this article.
New Zealand passed a new bill just last year that bans anyone aged 14 and under to ever legally buy cigarettes, a move that the country’s Government is sticking with.
UK Smoking Ban Plans Revealed
The newly proposed law states that anyone born on or after the 1st of January, 2009 would be completely banned from purchasing tobacco or cigarettes.
Sunak said at the time “If we are to do the right thing for our kids, we must try and stop teenagers taking up cigarettes in the first place, because without a significant change thousands of children will start smoking in the coming years and have their lives cut short as a result.”
King Charles III announced that the UK Government would ‘introduce legislation to create a smoke-free generation by restricting the sale of tobacco (…) restricting the sale and marketing of e-cigarettes to children’.
Also, the legal age to buy tobacco will be raised effectively by one year every year, says the Government, in hopes of preventing this and future generations from becoming addicted to smoking in the first place.
According to the UK Government, the cost of smoking is somewhere around the £17 billion-a-year mark, with £10 billion being lost yearly on productivity alone.
It’s also said that they have predicted that if successful, a ‘smoke-free generation’ could mean that those aged 14 to 30 years old could be nearly smoke-free by 2040.
As mentioned above, New Zealand hopes to cancel out smoking completely by 2025, however, it seems that the UK Government are pushing up their hopes by a couple more decades for good measure.
King Charles Wants Gone With Vaping
During the King’s Speech, it was also mentioned that a ‘further crackdown on youth vaping’ will be carried out – with a consultation already being held on how to protect children while additionally encouraging older smokers to use vapes to quit smoking entirely.
It’s said that it is asking people for their thoughts on whether disposable vapes should be banned completely or just restricted/limited and whether anything should be done about its current pricing model.
