The House of Commons of the United Kingdom approved this Tuesday in first reading the law that will prohibit anyone born after 2009 from legally purchasing tobacco throughout their lives.
The British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, considers this project one of the most important of his mandate, which was easily approved today thanks to the support of the majority of the parliamentary parties.
A total of 383 MPs voted in favor of the law, compared to only 67 who voted against, the vast majority of them members of Sunak’s own Conservative Party.
Among the rebel ‘Tories’ (who had been given the freedom to vote by Sunak himself) were very prominent figures such as former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, or the Minister for Business, Kemi Badenoch.
The Minister of Health, Victoria Atkins, argued in the previous debate that “there is no freedom in addiction” and that those who defend free choice should support the veto, since smokers are victims of their addiction and almost always recognize that they would not have started to smoke if they could go back.
Those who opposed the measure, like Truss, argued that it “restricts the freedom” of individuals to decide about themselves.
The hard wing of the Tories, which also embodies the internal opposition to Sunak, voted en bloc against the legislation, which Johnson himself described as “madness.”
Meanwhile, Labor overwhelmingly supported the text, which its Health spokesman, Wes Streeting, defended in the previous debate, as well as the Scottish nationalists and the Liberal Democrats.
The law was advanced by Sunak at the Conservative congress last October and has the objective that anyone born on or after January 1, 2009 will not be able to buy tobacco in their entire life.
The project also aims to restrict the sale of vaping devices and related products for adolescents and young people, although it does not foresee their total ban.
