Rishi Sunak is considering introducing some of the world’s toughest anti-smoking measures that would in effect ban the next generation from ever being able to buy cigarettes, the Guardian has learned.
Whitehall sources said the prime minister was looking at measures similar to those brought in by New Zealand last December. They involved steadily increasing the legal smoking age so tobacco would end up never being sold to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.
Stopping cigarette companies giving away packs of 5 outside colleges if you could prove you were over 16 was a sensible progressively restrictive law that followed to them not being displayed in shops and having warnings in the packets for example.
Man, my freshman year of college, in California of all places, we had cigarette vending machines in our freshman dorm. The only smoking policy in your dorm room was that your roommate had to be cool with it. Zero designated non-smoking rooms. There was a smoking section inside the cafeteria. You couldn't smoke during class, but the professors could smoke in their offices and we had a coffee bar in the building that was one huge cloud.
How things have changed, eh?