Sales ban, taxation: the UK's options for quitting tobacco

The UK, with a view to eradicating the tobacco epidemic within the next decade, is examining a number of measures to reduce tobacco consumption. These include significantly increasing taxes on the tobacco industry's turnover, raising the legal age for selling tobacco products, and restricting access to new nicotine products, such as e-cigarettes.

A Tobacco Mission, commissioned by the Department of Health, has been set up in the UK to assess the target of achieving a 2030 end to smoking, i.e. having fewer than 51% of the adult population in the country using tobacco products by that date.

Making the tobacco industry bear part of the health costs

Based on the polluter pays principle, the tobacco commission, led by Javed Khan, former chief executive of the charity Bernardo's, is proposing a new annual tax of around £700 million (€830 million), based on the turnover of tobacco companies. Khan, described as the government's "anti-smoking tsar" by The Telegraph, denies that such a proposal is radical. He says the new tax would mainly shift some of the health costs of tobacco consumption to the industry itself, rather than to the government, particularly social security.

Ban on tobacco sales: two scenarios considered

Other complementary measures are being studied as part of this mission on smoking. In particular, the mission is considering the possibility of raising the minimum age for the sale of tobacco products to 25 years, compared to 21 years currently. As an alternative to this measure, Javed Khan also announced that he was closely studying the New Zealand example, and in particular the implementation of a progressive ban on the sale of tobacco. Thus, anyone born from 2008 could never be able to buy tobacco products. Finally, in order to limit the consumption of electronic cigarettes, these could only be issued after obtaining a prescription. However, the mission highlighted the lack of scientific evidence on the long-term effects of the consumption of electronic cigarettes.

The health and human cost of tobacco in the UK

As Javed Khan points out, while tobacco control has made great strides over the past two decades, tobacco use remains a major health challenge for the country. In 2009, 22% of men and 20% of women were daily smokers, compared to 17% and 14% respectively in 2019. However, there are still seven million smokers in the UK, while social inequalities in smoking appear to persist. In some parts of the country, smoking prevalence is as high as 30% of the adult population. Smoking is responsible for the premature deaths of 74,000 people in England alone, and more than half a million hospital admissions in 2019-2020, in the midst of Covid-19.

FT