What is the UK smoking ban, how will it work and when will it start?

What is the smoking ban?

The restrictions will apply to the sale of cigarettes in the UK rather than the act of smoking itself.

It means that people born in or after 2009 will never be able to legally buy cigarettes, leading to an effective ban.

To crack down on underage sales, the government says it will introduce £100 on-the-spot fines for shops in England and Wales which sell tobacco and vapes to underage people.

They new rules will apply in all duty free shops in the UK, but anyone buying cigarettes abroad would be able to bring them back to the UK as long as they were legally acquired elsewhere.

How bad is smoking, and how many deaths does it lead to?

The government says it is still the number one preventable cause of death, disability and ill health, causing around 80,000 deaths per year across the UK, and costing the NHS and the economy an estimated £17bn every 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.

Vaping is less harmful than smoking cigarettes but is not risk-free. Health experts agree that anyone who doesn't already smoke should not start vaping.

Vaping is too recent an activity for any long-term effects to have become clear, but the NHS says it "unlikely to be totally harmless".

The government has already announced plans to ban disposable vapes in England as soon as April 2025, and hopes to extend this ban across the UK as well.

The contents, flavours and packaging of nicotine vapes will also be restricted in order to make them less attractive to children. A new tax on vaping will be introduced from October 2026.

What is happening to smoking rates in the UK?

Although the number of 11-17 year olds who smoke cigarettes has gone down in the last decade, the popularity of vaping has increased in this age group, with disposable vapes being the most popular type.

According the Office for National Statistics (ONS),12.9% of people aged 18 years and over in the UK - or around 6.4 million people - smoked cigarettes in 2022. This is the lowest proportion of current smokers since records began in 2011.

But, in November 2023, the current government said it will scrap the law to help fund tax cuts.

Mexico has some of the strictest anti-smoking laws in the world, including smoking bans at beaches, parks and in some cases private homes.

Portugal aims to have a "smoke-free generation" by 2040, and wants to pass a law that would stop bars, cafes and petrol stations from selling tobacco products.

Canada is hoping to reduce tobacco use to less than 5% by 2035 and earlier this year, became the first country to rule that health warnings should be printed on individual cigarettes.