Tobacco control advocates appear to view the generational smoking ban, first proposed by Singaporean researchers 2010, as a tool to force down cigarette consumption figures that have decreased little in the 20 years since the creation of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Despite the many restrictions implemented globally, there are still about 1.3 billion smokers in the world.
“The objectives of the FCTC are to ‘eliminate or reduce consumption of tobacco products—and reduce exposure to tobacco smoke,’” says Derek Yach, who as a cabinet director and executive WHO director was instrumental in creating the convention. “The FCTC does not set deadlines to achieve this, but subsequent sustainable development goals call for large declines in chronic disease deaths by 2030,” he says. “The WHO’s latest reports prepared for COP10 [the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the FCTC], which is now set for February 2024, indicate that most countries are off track to achieve these goals. Note that unless smoking rates decrease fast, death rates from many major chronic diseases will not change.”
While the FCTC does not envisage a generational smoking ban, some tobacco control activists view it as a key component of their “tobacco endgame” strategy. Most smokers, the measure’s proponents argue, start smoking at a young age; stopping the start by consecutively raising the smoking age would break the cycle of nicotine addiction.
Despite New Zealand’s U-turn and a similar decision by Malaysia, where lawmakers abandoned plans for a generational tobacco ban due to constitutional concerns, the idea still finds support internationally.
Singapore has been reported to be “open” to such plans. In 2022, Denmark unveiled proposals to ban the sale of cigarettes and nicotine products to any citizens born after 2010. On Oct. 5, 2023, U.K. Prime Minster Rishi Sunak expressed his support for a generational tobacco ban, saying it was the right step to tackle the leading cause of preventable ill health. According to a spokesperson, he upheld his proposal even after New Zealand repealed its version of the plan.
The consultation period for the proposed legislation closed on Dec. 6, 2023. It has received support from organizations such as the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT), which advised the U.K. government to extend the measure to all forms of recreational nicotine that are not approved as medical therapy for smoking cessation, including heated-tobacco products, e-cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, snus and oral nicotine pouches.
Yach thinks this is a bad idea. “I don’t like the smoke-free generation measure, but it is sort of tolerable if confined to smoked products and if there are smoke-free options for nicotine use,” he says. “However, the war-on-drugs assumption that demand for the drug itself can be eliminated by measures on the supply side has not served society well more generally.”
In a poll conducted on behalf of smokers’ lobby group Forest, nearly three-fifths of respondents agreed that when people are 18 years old—and thus legally adults—they should be allowed to purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products. The legislation may be published in Parliament in early 2024. However, at press time, reports suggested that the U.K. was backpedaling on the measure as well, saying the country might raise the legal smoking age to 21 instead.
