The upper house of the state of Tasmania, Australia, is due to debate whether sales of cigarettes should be banned in the case of people born after 2000, according to a story by Daniel McCulloch for the Examiner.
Ivan Dean, a member of the Legislative Council, has introduced a private members bill that would amend the state’s Health Act to ban the sale of cigarettes to individuals born after 2000, starting in 2018.
The bill is scheduled to be debated on March 24.
In his story, which was relayed by the TMA, McCulloch described how tobacco company representatives had said that while they supported regulation on cigarette sales, they were against backing a generational smoking ban.
Imperial Tobacco Australia spokesperson Andrew Gregson said that Imperial had always supported sensible, practical and rational regulation, but the bill in question wasn’t any of those.
Tobacco products were purchased by adults exercising freedom of choice, but it was quite rightly illegal to sell them to minors.
Gregson warned that such a ban would increasingly push cigarette sales into illegal markets.