United Kingdom: gradually banning the sale of cigarettes, is it really realistic and useful?

What if cigarettes were banned from sale, even to adults? This is the scenario towards which the United Kingdom is heading, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak having announced on Wednesday October 4 his intention to extend the legal age for purchasing tobacco by one year each year and avoid “17 billion pounds” (20 billion euros) in annual health expenditure for the State. Currently, the legal age to buy cigarettes is 18 in the UK. This would mean, if the law was adopted by 2027, “that a 14-year-old today will never be legally sold a cigarette,” said Rishi Sunak, going so far as to speak of a “generation without tobacco.

The idea is that the legal age for buying cigarettes evolves at the same time as that of the first “tobacco-free” generation. A young person turning 14 in 2023 will thus never reach the legal age to buy their pack, while “legal” smokers – aged 18 and over – today will be able to continue to do so freely. A tobacco exit strategy for future generations already applied by New Zealand since the start of the year. Even if the project is not yet detailed, the United Kingdom could ultimately have to ban the sale of cigarettes and tobacco to anyone born after a certain date, specifies The Independent.

Unrealistic? However, the weapon is formidable for attacking the root of tobacco addiction, which begins very young, specialists believe. “The vast majority of smokers started before the age of 18,” recalls Yves Martinet, pulmonologist and president of the National Committee Against Smoking (CNCT). After this age, we do not start using tobacco.” His colleague Loïc Josseran, doctor specializing in public health and president of the Alliance Against Tobacco, agrees: “If we cut off the youth branch of the tobacco industry, in 20 years it will decline.”

In France, on the other hand, such a measure would not be very useful in the current state of things, doctors point out. “We already do not control the application of the ban on sales to minors,” regrets Yves Martinet. It’s like if you put red lights or speed limits without controlling them, there’s no point.” On this point, France “is lagging behind,” laments Bertrand Dautzenberg, tobacco specialist at the Arthur Vernes Institute, while the United Kingdom and New Zealand are already strict on sales to under-18s. This is the sine qua non condition for the ban to be effective.

It is also only useful “in a coherent plan for the denormalization of tobacco”, warns Bertrand Dautzenberg. Increasingly banishing cigarettes from public spaces would, for example, make it possible to “denormalize” the action of smoking, underlines Yves Martinet. “It would also be effective against passive smoking – which is a real public health problem – and would make it possible to less habituate children to prevent them from starting smoking later.”

The ban on sales to younger generations must also be accompanied by help for current smokers to encourage them to quit and quit their addiction. For specialists, this requires good support - support, patches, etc. - and by "a reduction in points of sale" to make the "product accessible", believes Yves Martinet. New Zealand has therefore decided to divide by ten the number of points of sale authorized to sell cigarettes on its territory.

Aren't smokers likely to turn to the black market to obtain cigarettes once they are banned? Doctors assure that it would be marginal. “In France, despite all the price increases, we see that smuggling has not exploded,” assures Loïc Josseran. According to Public Health France, only 0.8% of French smokers said they bought their last pack on the street in 2021, compared to 0.1% in 2014. In France, the overwhelming majority of cigarettes (nearly 80%) are still purchased from tobacconists… or in a neighboring country at cheaper prices (15%).

Tobacco, which kills 75,000 people per year in France, is the leading cause of preventable cancer. The number of daily smokers, however, continues to decline, to 25.3% of 18-75 year olds in 2021 compared to 30% in the early 2000s, according to Public Health France. It is among young people, a key audience, that the statistics are most encouraging: at 17, only 15.6% will smoke every day in 2022 compared to 25.1% in 2017, according to the Observatory. French about drugs and addictive tendencies.

If a progressive British-style ban is not officially on the agenda, the latest national program to combat tobacco set the objective of a “tobacco-free generation” at 2032.