How the U.K.’s generational smoking ban could backfire

In 1604, King James I of England wrote one of history’s most fervent anti-smoking tracts in response to the rising popularity of tobacco imported from the New World. Smoking, he concluded, was a “custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.” [sic]

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King James would have loved the new law set to be approved by King Charles III establishing a new generation in the United Kingdom that will be forbidden from purchasing tobacco for their entire lives. Specifically, the law makes it an offense to sell cigarettes, cigars, pipe or chewing tobacco, as well as various other forms of tobacco leaf, to anyone born after Jan. 1, 2009. This, its proponents say, will eventually lead to a smoke-free society, as the legal age for buying cigarettes rises inexorably until the last living smoker in the U.K. joins the choir invisible.

It’s not hard to imagine how this neat solution may falter. While no one is against banning the sale of cigarettes to teenagers, the situation will become increasingly absurd as today’s 17-year-olds age into maturity, creating a permanent division between adults allowed to buy tobacco and those who are prohibited. Supposedly, the day will come when a 50-year-old can buy a cigar from the tobacconist, but their 49-year-old friend must be turned away. Can one really expect this prohibition to be durably respected?

The U.K.’s new law takes an ultimately infantilizing view of tobacco use.

“Children in the U.K. will be part of the first smoke-free generation, protected from a lifetime of addiction and harm,”U.K. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said. But these children will eventually become adults denied the right to make decisions for themselves. It’s grossly illiberal. 

In the two decades that I’ve been writing about tobacco policy, I’ve seen the meaning of the phrase “smoking ban” evolve from no smoking in bars to no smoking, period, even among consenting adults. Not long ago, warning of this could be dismissed as a slippery slope fallacy. Now, it’s the imminent reality for a country of 70 million.

Illicit tobacco sales are already a growing problem in the U.K., driven by rising taxes. An investigation by the BBC last year traced criminal supply chains for untaxed, and often counterfeit, tobacco from Europe and China making its way into stashes hidden beneath floorboards in retail shops. Generational prohibition would raise the incentives for illicit sales ever higher.

Australia provided a case study in how this could get out of control. 

The country is widely praised for its strict anti-nicotine measures, including one of the world’s highest taxes on cigarettes and a ban on selling vapes without medical prescription. But the result has been a massive black market, with more than half of cigarettes and nearly all e-cigarettes estimated to be sold illegally. This market is violent, too: More than 250 arsons have been associated with gangs supplying illegal products, including one that killed a woman when attackers accidentally hit the wrong address. Crucially, Australia’s decline in smoking has stalled as well, likely due in part to the easy availability of contraband cigarettes.

Another country in the Commonwealth offers a different lesson. New Zealand passed its own generational tobacco ban in 2022, but the country repealed it before it ever took effect. Like Australia, New Zealand also has high taxes on cigarettes. Unlike Australia, it has relatively friendly policies toward safer nicotine products, such as e-cigarettes. The result has been a much tamer illicit market, while still seeing plummeting rates of smoking.

The outcomes of the U.K.’s smoke-free generation law will depend greatly on its policies toward alternative nicotine products. The growth of illicit markets can be attenuated if potential smokers choose to switch to products such as vapes and nicotine pouches, which have already contributed to dramatically reduced rates of smoking. Yet the same law also restricts advertising of these products and may lead to bans on flavors, a potential inhibitor for some on making the switch away from smoking.

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Even the rosiest best-case scenarios, if they happen, will have unintended consequences. Illicit markets don’t have to be massive to create real harm in the form of corruption, lost tax revenues, violence and the costs of law enforcement and punishing offenders. Just look at the money and violence associated with Australia’s tobacco smuggling gangs, or organized criminals associated with illegal drugs everywhere in the world. 

Conventional means such as taxes, educational campaigns, age restrictions, limits on where people can light up and innovation in safer nicotine products have already achieved great progress against smoking. Prohibition is neither necessary nor worth the risks.

Even the rosiest best-case scenarios, if they happen, will have unintended consequences.

The tendency isn’t limited to the U.K. Worldwide, governments are embracing a new era of prohibition for nicotine and tobacco products. Some of these are worse than others. Singapore, for example, has threatened importers of e-cigarettes with nearly a decade in prison. Here in the United States, statewide bans on flavored vapes have shifted demand to lethal cigarettes while leading to the arrests and prosecutions of sellers. And a few American cities have already implemented bans on tobacco sales or their own smoke-free generation laws.

The potential for such laws to go awry is clear enough from the drug war, alcohol Prohibition and past attempts at banning cigarettes. Around the early 19th century, 15 states in the U.S. experimented with bans on cigarette sales, and all of them eventually repealed.

Or one could look back to King James himself. Despite his status as one of history’s great opponents of smoking, his subjects took a different view, continuing to light their pipes even as he raised their taxes. Eventually, he opted to turn tobacco into a profitable royal monopoly. 

Even with the powers of a king, one must reckon with adults pursuing their own desires, which will durably include some fraction of the population preferring genuine tobacco. A free society can accommodate them while still pursuing public health, without the heavy hand of prohibition.

Anthony L. Fisher

Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW, often covering free speech, civil liberties and extremism. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider.