Will Rishi Sunak’s new law really herald the end of cigarettes? - Susan Dalgety

Have we seen the end of cigarettes? Last week, the Prime Minister persuaded MPs from all parties to support his big idea to end smoking by stopping anyone aged 14 or younger from ever legally buying cigarettes.

MPs have backed a bill, championed by prime minister Rishi Sunak to phase out the legal sale of cigarettes. Picture: Kim Mogg/Getty

And while smoking age is a devolved matter, the Scottish Government has agreed to a UK-wide approach and supports the Prime Minister’s plan to stub out smoking for future generations.

On paper, the proposal makes public health sense. Four out of five smokers start before the age of 20, so making cigarettes illegal for Generation Alpha seems a logical step.

I remember the thrill of my first fag, aged 15, during a school trip to Hadrian’s Wall. The acrid taste of that first Benson & Hedges Gold remains with me today.

One puff and I was hooked, and remained an addict until I stopped on my 40th birthday, fearful I would end up like my father, dead at 64 from COPD.

Would it have been better if I had never started? Of course, but cigarettes were so much part of my adolescence and early adulthood that I don’t regret starting. I am just thankful I was able to stop in time for my body to repair itself.

Young people are less likely to start smoking than we were back in the 1970s, when it seemed everyone smoked. Lighting up that first cigarette was as much a rite of passage as a first kiss. But Millennials and Generation Z are much more sensible, except – it seems – young middle-class women, who are the only cohort where smoking has increased in the last decade. A recent study showed that the proportion of affluent women under 45 who smoke rose from 12 to 15 per cent between 2013 and last year.

Sunak’s ban is too late for these women, but if it becomes law, it should stop their children ever enjoying the illicit thrill of their first roll up, saving countless lives and freeing up valuable NHS resources. But will it? Cannabis is illegal yet most young people have inhaled at least once, and cocaine use among otherwise law-abiding citizens is astonishingly high. A report by the UN ten years ago revealed that Scots were, even then, the world’s biggest consumers of cocaine, per head of population. Today, it is as easy to order a wrap of coke to your door as it is to get a Chinese takeaway delivered.

It is perfectly feasible that by 2034 a packet of Benson & Hedges Gold will become another street drug, just like cannabis or cocaine, with young people queuing up in pub toilets to buy a packet of fags from old people still able to feed their habit legally.

There is nothing like a whiff of illegality to stir the rebellious hearts of adolescents. I started smoking not because I was desperate to be like my father, addicted to his Golden Virginia roll ups, but because I knew it would drive my mother crazy. I only hope Sunak’s plan, well-intentioned as it is, doesn’t end up creating a bigger problem, with the police forced to add nicotine to the list of illegal drugs they have to control.