The UK Amazing Declaration: What You Can Never Do Since Your Birth In 2009

The UK has declared its intention to become a smoke-free nation and is pushing for a policy that would prevent certain generations from smoking at all.

The plan is to prohibit anyone born after 2009 from buying cigarettes for life, even when they reach adulthood.

According to UK media outlets such as The Times, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced during a speech at the Conservative Party’s annual conference in Manchester on the 4th (local time) that he would push for an anti-smoking policy that would prevent anyone under the age of 14 from buying cigarettes for life, thus creating a non-smoking generation.

The proposed legislation by Prime Minister Sunak will completely ban the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after January 1, 2009. Currently, in the UK, one can buy cigarettes from the age of 18, but the proposal also includes a plan to gradually increase the smoking age by one year each year. The sale of e-cigarettes will also be restricted.

Prime Minister Sunak predicts that by around 2040, there will be almost no young people smoking.

Prime Minister Sunak said, “Four out of five smokers start smoking before the age of 20,” and “Most try to quit later, but they fail due to addiction and regret that they should not have started the habit in the first place.”

He emphasized, “If we can break this vicious cycle, we can end the causes of death and disease.”

According to a statement released by the UK Prime Minister’s Office, there are a total of 6.4 million smokers in the UK, accounting for about 13% of the population. One in four people who die from cancer in the UK, with smoking identified as one of the main causes. The social cost of this is around 17 billion pounds (approximately $23.1 billion) per year.

The UK aims to reduce the number of smokers in the country to a maximum of 1.7 million by 2075 through this plan.

Prime Minister Sunak plans to soon put this bill to a vote in the UK Parliament, and if passed, the policy will be implemented immediately.

Meanwhile, New Zealand, which has a high smoking rate, implemented its ‘Smoke Free’ anti-smoking policy at the end of last year, which prohibits the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after January 1, 2009.

According to this policy, by 2073 there will be no smokers under the age of 65 in New Zealand. However, there are ongoing concerns about the formation of a black market due to the restriction on cigarette sales, and continuous backlash from smokers.