UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes

https://nypost.com/2026/04/21/world-news/uk-to-permanently-ban-future-generations-from-buying-cigarettes/

by ivewonyoung • 3 months ago

38 135 3 months ago

Censorship and restrictions for regular people.

jmye• 3 months ago

What, specifically, does banning buying cigarettes have to do with “censorship”? Or are we just saying words now, because they seem emotive?

KetoManx644• 3 months ago

Look at the root of censorship and then do a Google search. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censoring

allears• 3 months ago

I totally agree that tobacco is a harmful substance. I'm not sure if I agree that a government should try to legislate citizens' habits.

Pooge3• 3 months ago

Including for heroin or other hard drugs?

BLKNSLVR7• 3 months ago

I look at it, not as legislating people's habits, more as a private company wants to sell these things in our country, but there is a clear, measurable negative effect on society as a result (and in the case of cigarettes there is no positive effect whatsoever that may offset the negative).

I would call that an easy ban. You can't sell that shit here legitimately. I'm a little surprised the attempts haven't been more widespread.

I wonder what possible gap there is for things that can be illegal to sell, but you can buy them from international sellers and use them in the privacy of your own home? (and health insurance won't cover related complications).

inheritedwisdom• 3 months ago

In the US I tend to agree (given the current pay to live system is constructed) but in the UK with single payer insurance this seems more palatable.

I’m curious if a “free society / libertarian” middle ground would be limiting access to NHS for those that choose to continue to use known harmful substances. I’d posit that many would object to that the way “death panels” were politicized when the Affordable Healthcare Act was passed though.

TheChaplain2• 3 months ago

It depends?

AFAIK healthcare in UK is tax funded, and smoking with its long list of damages to the body, takes a portion of that taxpayer money which could be used on something underfunded, like mental healthcare.

bombcar3• 3 months ago

This is the country that legislates butter knives and naughty words.

joe463369• 3 months ago

Do you live in the United Kingdom?

theshrike79• 3 months ago

Americans want to legislate bathrooms.

You can still get addicted to nicotine, they're just banning a very specific delivery mechanism.

stevenalowe3• 3 months ago

I cannot fathom the twists of logic necessary to justify such a specific and arbitrary prohibition

cineticdaffodil2• 3 months ago

I think its an attempt to cut back on health system costs, disguised as well meaning measure. Up next alcohol bans. One might not even numb oneself while beeing a slave to the "allways right" generation vampire.

rorylawless• 3 months ago

Yes, the government has concocted a dastardly conspiracy to cut health system costs by reducing access to a known cause of illness.

Pooge3• 3 months ago

Alcohol was always an important cultural symbol (drinking wine as a Christian, for example). This is not the case for tobacco, especially highly artificial one.

Tobacco is inherently bad for one's surrounding as well.

weego• 3 months ago

Smoking related illness costs the UK more in healthcare than the tax revenue it collects.

No twist needed, it's really fucking logical.

HiroProtagonist• 3 months ago

Could one make a similar argument for banning sugar?

sph• 3 months ago

Nonsense. Did people already forget the prohibitionism? Did people already forget the war on drugs? I remember liberals were talking about drug decriminalisation 10 years ago, has everybody turned into a puritan nowadays?

Also, very hypocritical argument when alcohol (and gambling) are very accepted in British culture. I'd like to see the numbers showing that the few people that still roll their own cigs at 15 pounds a pouch cost more to the NHS than all the alcoholics in Britain.

Smoking ban is, as usual, Labour going for the low-hanging fruits to scrape the votes of the elderly that are likely to be swayed by these empty arguments, just like the Online Safety Act. One thing's for sure: Barry, 63, would not like if alcohol and gambling were regulated in any way.

I'm not a smoker any more, hate the things and can't stand the smoke, but I sure am glad to have left that island of short-sighted yet heavy-handed politics.

bombcar3• 3 months ago

Raise taxes until it balances!

amiga3863• 3 months ago

Life is not a balance sheet, Christie Malry.

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng209/resources/impact-on-n...

Smoking-related illness is estimated to cost the NHS £2.6 billion a year

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2019/01/nhs-long-term-plan-will-h...

Alcohol-related harm is estimated to cost the NHS in England £3.5 billion every year.

If we look exclusively at numbers, prohibition would save money. If that's all we care about, try that out - oh, the Americans did, and it wrecked their country and filled it with gangsters, because no amount of trying to stop people drinking actually stopped people drinking, and normal people having to pretend they weren't going to drink, but secretly really really needing it and finding criminals to supply them with drink built out an entire parallel black economy and gave gangsters huge amounts of money and power.

If we're looking at saving money, maybe just kill the long-term disabled and elderly? Easy win for saving money! That's all that matters, after all.

briandw2• 3 months ago

It’s also cheaper to euthanize people rather than treat them. It’s just logical.

stevenalowe3• 3 months ago

It’s logical if you regard people as cattle

t-35• 3 months ago

There's little logic to it because prohibition is a fashion, and politics is the dressing up of self-interest in flashy clothes while telling the public they like it. This is not the first ban on tobacco in Britain, and it probably won't be the last.

Muromec• 3 months ago

It's an interesting experiment and we have all the time we need to see the results.

TheChaplain2• 3 months ago

I mean drugs are also banned, and how does that work out?

bdangubic2• 3 months ago

if you get caught buying/using/… you go to prison

kakacik• 3 months ago

I dont think you can hide with smoking cigarettes almost anywhere, the stink is far too strong, characteristic abd outright repulsive.

Also, you normally dont go to jail by using drugs... what a clueless comment

wlkr• 3 months ago

Somewhat related HN discussions from a while back when New Zealand sought to do the same [1] [2]. Worth noting that it was later scrapped [3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33970717

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33967454

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/19/new-zealand-sm...

pkulak3• 3 months ago

Wow, lots of libertarian absolutists up this morning.

Guys, that's all well and good as a philosophy, but you need to integrate your views into the world around you too. When you live in a society that has _decided_ to collectively shoulder health care costs, and assume responsibility for everyone's health, you also may need some ground rules. I know it sucks, because _you_ may have just been born there and you don't really have a choice in what society you live, so that means care needs to be taken, but it doesn't mean there can never be any cost-of-entry.

tt2418• 3 months ago

When you live in a society that has _decided_ to collectively shoulder health care costs

Look, I found the problem!

pkulak3• 3 months ago

Democracy is the problem?

roenxi3• 3 months ago

The ironic part to me is you're making an argument similar to one the libertarian absolutists make - society can't shoulder healthcare costs because then it'll need to start taking responsibility over how healthily people live their lives. Without even taking a position on good or bad of it, if the "you also may need some ground rules" is going to stick, why not also bring in mandatory exercise and ban people from sugar and alcohol too? Be a big win for healthcare costs and do people the power of good.

I actually quite like your comment, it'd be interesting to have the stats on whether the downvoter objected to your tone or if they made the logical inference that this argument undermines universal healthcare and didn't like that.

pkulak3• 3 months ago

why not also bring in mandatory exercise and ban people from sugar and alcohol too

I literally said "so care needs to be taken" and you hit me with a slippery slope argument?

oompydoompy74• 3 months ago

I guess they should ban all the chippies too. Everyone is unhealthy in their own way and that’s the cost of doing business. Socializing healthcare does not require banning unhealthy behavior. It turns out that money does in fact grow on trees and they can make more because it’s fucking fake and it always has been. How are we going to pay for this!?! You literally create money. Governments do it all the time for missiles .

BLKNSLVR7• 3 months ago

Cigarettes don't grow out of the ground to be able to be deep fried. Some private enterprise manufactures them for sale.

Just ban the sale of them in the country. They offer no positive for society or humanity whatsoever. Chippies at least have their origins in actual food sustenance.

If some new slow method of societally expensive suicide hit the market, it would get banned quick smart. Cigarettes have only stuck around so long because of legacy and well funded lobbyists and PR / marketing types that have been happy to lie at the cost of millions of lives.

Nice, let's defend that.

joquarky• 3 months ago

Have you seen Demolition Man (1993)?

KetoManx644• 3 months ago

Wow, lots of statists up this morning.

Guys, it's all well and good as a philosophy, but maybe you should take a second look and reconsider that the state just keeps creeping more and more into your private affairs and is very glad when you believe them when they say things are "for the children" and "for the public good". One day you might find yourself in jail for sharing a meme that is critical of the government in any way.

BLKNSLVR7• 3 months ago

... and nothing of value was lost.

threepts2• 3 months ago

They also permanently banned coke,meth and other drugs since the inception of law, guess how that turned out?

"The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that 8.7% of people aged 16 to 59 years (around 2.9 million people) reported using any drug in the last 12 months for the year ending (YE) March 2025; there was no statistically significant change compared with YE March 2024"

I believe limiting people's liberty is an ineffective option opposed to education.

klodolph• 3 months ago

guess how that turned out?

My guess is that significantly fewer people use drugs than would have used drugs if they were not banned.

"The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that 8.7% of people aged 16 to 59 years (around 2.9 million people) reported using any drug in the last 12 months for the year ending (YE) March 2025; there was no statistically significant change compared with YE March 2024"

Are there some significant changes to policy during that time period? I don’t see how this factoid is related to whatever argument you are trying to make.

amiga3863• 3 months ago

They're pointing out that 2.9 millon people take drugs (extrapolating from the people surveyed), and law says that should be zero.

This law will attempt to ban cigarettes. Estimate how many people will buy them and smoke them illegally. The number will not be zero.

nmeofthestate2• 3 months ago

There are less harmful ways to get addicted to nicotine that will continue to be legal for people affected by this legislation.

stavros2• 3 months ago

You think education is effective? How much educating do they need to do about meth being bad before people stop using it?

threepts2• 3 months ago

I merely suggested that it is an better alternative as opposed to restricting people's freedom (and setting a precedent that the government can just simply choose to ignore people's rights).

Also criminalization of something always leads to its romanticization to some extent. Look at the rap scene. There is always a rebound effect.

snapplebobapple3• 3 months ago

there is also a strong question as to whether smokers are actually a net cost to government or not. They draw decades less old age pension, have decades less medical visits, etc. I am extremely unconvinced that a large cancer related medical cost now has a higher net present value than a stream of government pension payouts, health costs, etc for decades ended with a large medical cost for some other reason. This is the correct comparable for smoking vs non smoking if you are contemplating limiting peoples freedoms and i dont think it holds water.

Milpotel• 3 months ago

The net effect of smoking on healthcare and welfare costs. A cohort study. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3533014/ (Finland, 2012)

intended3• 3 months ago

If your government requires its people to be dead, it is by nature a foul and evil thing.

Mawr2• 3 months ago

This gets easier to answer once you consider that, unlike an alcoholic, a smoker directly harms others around him, not just himself. And that's just on top of all the indirect damage.

And then, even as for strictly the damage he does to himself, cancer is far from the only risk.

Mawr2• 3 months ago

guess how that turned out?

Well, I don't hear colleagues at work saying they're going for a "meth break", so... pretty well, I'd say?

tt2418• 3 months ago

This is the logical conclusion when you socialize healthcare.

If you’re pro NHS / single payer, you *must* support this. As well as banning drugs, sugar, extreme sports, unprotected sex, and other high risk behavior. Anything short of this just doesn’t make sense.

WarmWash• 3 months ago

We can just tax the rich to cover the cost of our personal decisions. Which is their fault anyway because I wouldn't have gotten diabetes if they didn't shove that junk take out food down my throat.

tastyfreeze3• 3 months ago

Now to take the last logical step like Canada and suggest assisted suicide to the high cost patients.

BLKNSLVR7• 3 months ago

Only those who have become high cost patients due to choosing to put themselves at risk for years.

fontain6• 3 months ago

I assume you’re being sarcastic but just in case: the goal of single payer healthcare isn’t to spend the least amount of money on healthcare. The goal of single payer healthcare is to guarantee everyone a minimum quality of life. You can believe that the minimum quality of life includes the option to engage in unprotected sex and sky diving.

tt2418• 3 months ago

I’m not being sarcastic. If you live in a society that chooses to force people to pay for other’s healthcare costs, you must support banning high risk behavior.

Not out of frugality. It’s a simple issue of fairness. 5% of the healthcare consumers will result in 95% of the costs. Why is it fair that the 5% that choose to engage in high risk behavior are subsidized at the expense of the 95% that choose not to?

keybored4• 3 months ago

Taxes as they currently exist are a bandaid on wealth inequality. Getting rid of rich people parasitism would be a better way to balance the budget than either right-libertarian principles or taxing commoners for their stress relief like tobacco.

Though judging by the amount milords in the article I suspect that is far ways off.

tt2418• 3 months ago

Wealth inequality is a nonissue. Nobody has ever been able to provide me with any evidence to the contrary.

postepowanieadm• 3 months ago

Not really: you want to prevent people from being passive smokers, and add sufficient taxation on cigarettes.

masfuerte2• 3 months ago

You are wrong. The swingeing taxes on cigarettes already cover the healthcare costs and the smokers die early saving even more money.

bitshiftfaced2• 3 months ago

smokers die early saving even more money.

I thought cancer care tended to be pretty expensive. Not sure that your math is so clear cut.

noplacelikehome2• 3 months ago

Why must I do anything of the sort? As with all things there is a balance to be found that does not necessarily mean zero.

I can both support healthcare that’s free at the point of access (this distinction is important, because the NHS is not strictly speaking a “single payer” system, as both National Insurance and tax revenues from e.g. alcohol and cigarette sales are used to fund it) and individual liberty, even if that increases the cost of healthcare delivery. The NHS is not evidence of an authoritarian regime, it is evidence of the state playing a role in maintaining baseline standards of health, largely for the purposes of maintaining a healthy workforce.

Americans have such a wildly warped worldview in my experience.

tt2418• 3 months ago

The 5% of high risk healthcare consumers will result in 95% of the costs. It’s not fair for the 95% of low risk people to subsidize the remainder.

mellosouls• 3 months ago

The article here just links to the BBC report that was discussed here at the time:

Smoking ban for people born after 2008 in the UK agreed (172 points, 413 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47847240

baggy_trough• 3 months ago

Entirely absurd and unacceptable, like so much coming out of the UK these days.

shevy-java• 3 months ago

I never smoked in my life so one would assume I would be in favour of this. The health data is clear. At the same time I can not stand governments constantly interfering into regular people's life. I think at some point there has to put a stop to this - the idea that governments can control people like little slaves is just outrageous, even if the alleged use case is logically compelling or appears to be that way. By the same token governments can say "you can only use the internet if you ID".

Also, as some point out this is "liberty" - well, I don't see how a restriction can be about "liberty" at all. It is the opposite of it; having a use case that seems logical still does not make a strategy about it good.

trebligdivad• 3 months ago

It's going to make for an interesting future age verification problem; For a few years it'll be easy, because it's still only going to be asking people under say 25 for proof; but then in a few decades it's going to be people trying to figure out if there customer is over 40 say.

BLKNSLVR7• 3 months ago

All legit customers will be long dead by then.

nmeofthestate2• 3 months ago

True, but I think most people get addicted to smoking when young, and are less likely to just decide to start smoking at 40, especially when vaping is an option.

vikaveri• 3 months ago

Why would it be difficult? ID says 2009 or later and you can't buy? I would imagine checking age for tobacco becomes easier

keybored4• 3 months ago

I get the apparent logic of phasing cigarettes into unlawfulness over decades. But considering this is so one-sided in terms of curtailing liberty for one generation,[1] it would have been interesting if they also got a privilege that us oldies are cut off from. Just as a perk to offset things.

But whatever could that be? Twenty-year 5% discount on vegetables?

[1] But this youngest generation also gets the privilege of never having easy access to cigarettes.

t-35• 3 months ago

[1] But this youngest generation also gets the privilege of never having easy access to cigarettes.

Being an island, it's probably slightly easier to control smuggling, but if there's money to be made, people will be smuggling in cartons. Anyway, getting an older person to buy cigs isn't difficult, and they're still legal for the majority of the population. I doubt smoking will become immediately attractive, but if the ban sticks around, probably in a decade or so tobacco will be a niche hipster rebellion, then become poser-cool, then totally normalized again.

notrustincloud• 3 months ago

"being an island" doesnot, in fact, make it easier to inhibit smuggling. One reason, the sheer number of small, unstaffed seaports and the volume of small fishing vessel traffic does in fact make it easier for unobserved ingress of materials under the guisd of small commercial and noncommercial fishing and small to midsize shipping. (see Scotland as major import of currently illicit drugs and undocumented refugees)

Adding another globally common and less regulated substance to the list of extrajudicial desireables simply equals a performance bonus and being low aquisition risk (already shipping other goods from places that grow tobacco and make cigs) as an incentive for the already very profitable and active operators of these networks.

From my perspective this would simply make being a smuggler easier and more profitable and be a value uplift for corrupt enforcement and a net reduction in collectable taxes... moving the revenue from comsumption tax books to black market coffers.

ChrisArchitect• 3 months ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47847240

ikidd• 3 months ago

Cowardly way to legislate.

UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes

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