Is creating a ‘smoke-free generation’ a pipe dream?
Northeastern experts celebrate this move to ban cigarette sales to those born in 2009 or later.
When Big Ben in London strikes midnight to ring in 2027, it won’t just be ushering in the New Year. The bell will also toll for newly minted adults’ ability to purchase cigarettes.
In an effort to create what United Kingdom officials called a “smoke-free generation,” a ban will prohibit those born in 2009 or later from buying cigarettes. The ban would permanently do away with the legal age to buy cigarettes in the U.K., but would not bar anyone from smoking them. The legal age for smoking is 16.
The ban could, in a sense, fast-track a trend that was already happening. Smoking cigarettes in the U.K. was already on a downward trend following years of successful targeted measures. Yet public health officials are still staring down the challenge in curbing the use of other nicotine products like vapes and nicotine pouches that are more popular with this age group than cigarettes, Northeastern University experts said. The ban was approved by King Charles III in April.
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Preventing future generations from buying cigarettes before they can become addicted to them is one method public health advocates see as one of the best ways to make a sizable dent for the greater good and may inspire other governments to follow suit, the experts said.
“It’s totally, totally superstar innovation,” Mi-Kyung “Miki” Hong, a health sciences professor on Northeastern University’s Oakland campus who is studying the effects of a potential smoking ban in apartment buildings, said of the U.K. cigarette sales ban. “There’s a lot of evidence (where) if you ban smoking, people get better health.”
Richard Daynard, president of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern, said it’s a compelling strategy because it flips social pressure on its head: not only are cigarettes not being sold to the individual, but they can’t be sold to their friends or peers, either. Many studies over the years have pointed to peer pressure as a way to influence others to smoke cigarettes.
There may come a day where the more common societal pressure is to stop smoking rather than to start, Daynard said.
“They become very uncool. This is no longer a rite of passage, no longer showing how mature you are,” he said. “That should be extremely effective.”
A widespread idea
The U.K. cigarette sales ban is part of the Tobacco and Vapes Act, introduced in 2024 following then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s announcement of his intent to phase out the sale of cigarettes. Data from the U.K.’s National Health Service shows that there were 408,700 hospitalizations related to smoking in 2022 and 2023, and 74,800 smoking-associated deaths in 2019.
Despite these recent statistics, the concept of a “smoke-free society” is not novel. C. Everett Koop, the U.S. Surgeon General from 1981 to 1989, said reducing smoking was his “top priority” as it was “the single greatest killer of our people,” and called for a “society free of smoking” in the United States by the new millennium.
Over the years, governments have sought other ways to tamp down on smoking, from ensuring anti-smoking PSAs and tobacco advertisements get the same exposure on the airwaves, to requiring that images of smoking-related disease be prominently displayed on cigarette packets. The U.S. under the Biden administration proposed making cigarettes less addictive by limiting nicotine levels, but it’s unlikely to advance under the Trump administration, according to reports.
Mark Gottlieb, director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute, noted that the U.K. ban is “part of an iterative public health process, and the fact that it was done at the national level in the United Kingdom is an enormous accomplishment.”
In response to the legislation in the U.K., Canada’s health minister said a similar measure was “being looked into,” according to news reports.
Other countries have had mixed success with similar measures. New Zealand had approved a similar ban in 2022, but it was repealed two years later before it ever went into effect.
The Maldives instituted a country-wide vape ban in 2024, and a year later became the first country to have a generational cigarette ban that not only prevented the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 2006, but also prevented them from smoking it.
Here in the U.S., the city of Brookline in Massachusetts was the first in the country to create a generational ban on cigarette sales for anyone born after 1999. After the state’s highest court upheld the rule following a legal challenge, nearly two dozen other communities in Massachusetts adopted similar bans.
An independent review commissioned by the government in 2022 lauded the U.K.’s tobacco controls, like banning tobacco advertisements or barring smoking in bars, as leading the world in reducing smoking over decades. But the review also suggested a generational ban as one of the ways to further curb smoking.
Next-generation products
And while smoking cigarettes in the U.K. trends downward, the use of e-cigarettes or vapes has been rising. In 2024, the number of daily or occasional e-cigarette users in Great Britain – England, Scotland and Wales – overtook cigarette smokers, or 5.4 million people versus 4.9 million people, according to a survey of people 16 and older published by the Office for National Statistics.
“These are the products that young people in the 21st century are attracted to, not so much cigarettes anymore,” Gottlieb said. “It’s not going to cause lung cancer at the same rate that cigarettes did. It’s not going to cause COPD at the same rate that cigarettes did. But they are not risk-free products, healthwise. They are definitely high-risk products for addiction. I think that’s where the next generation of tobacco restrictions need to be.”
Cigarette makers have also taken notice.
The CEO of Philip Morris International, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, said in 2021 that it would stop selling cigarettes in the U.K. within the decade. The company has instead been pushing its smoke-free products including a range of e-cigarettes and the nicotine pouch brand Zyn. As of April, 43% of its global net revenue came from smoke-free products, according to the company’s website.
Given these trends, the new legislation includes a ban on advertising and sponsorship of vapes and other nicotine products. It also restricts the type of packaging on these products to be less enticing for children. The U.K. has banned the sale of single-use vapes since 2025.
For as much as the ban does, it does not go as far as affecting the entire U.K. population. Hong said it’s important to consider what potential impacts there may be when placing a control on social behavior. In her research, she wants to ensure that a smoking ban in apartment buildings wouldn’t displace residents, whether that is by choosing to live elsewhere to continue smoking or by being forced to move under such a rule.
The U.K. generational ban does make sure existing users aren’t harmed by being “cold-turkeyed,” Daynard said.
“It has the advantage over the complete ban that it does take care of the people who are addicted. They’re not being excluded,” he said. “But on the other hand, they’re also not being incentivized to quit.”
Such a generational ban is also unlikely to spur a black market for cigarettes, experts said, because the demand isn’t there from the younger population. And while it’s true that someone affected by a generational ban on cigarettes could just drive over to the next town (or travel to another country, in the U.K.’s case), that’s unlikely to happen, they noted.
“If you’re not addicted, why in the world would you be doing that? It doesn’t make any sense,” Daynard said.
