The British parliament has voted to outlaw smoking for future generations.
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill, introduced and championed by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, is set to ban smoking for anyone born after 2009.
It overwhelmingly passed a vote in the House of Commons with 383 votes to 67 on
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The U.K. Parliament’s House of Commons has voted overwhelmingly in favor of banning all nicotine products for individuals born after 2009. (iStock)
Government officials have boasted that the bill will produce the U.K.’s first-ever “smoke-free generation.”
There is still several steps to officially passing the bill into law, including a debate and vote in the upper chamber of the U.K. parliament, the House of Lords.
The Conservative Party has seen internal tensions over the smoking ban, which many Tory leaders have claimed is a misstep.
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Britain’s Prime Minster Rishi Sunak departs 10 Downing Street to go to the House of Commons for his weekly Prime Minister’s Questions in London. (Alastair Grant/AP Photo)
178 Conservative members of parliament voted for the bill with 57 voting against and 106 not recording a vote.
“When the party of Winston Churchill wants to ban cigars, donnez-moi un break [give me a break] as they say in Quebec, it’s just mad,” former Prime Minister Boris Johnson said last week at a conference in Canada.
Fellow ex-prime minister Liz Truess echoed Johnson’s concerns, saying the goal of legislating the personal decisions of grown men and women was misguided.
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A protester in Parliament Square holds a placard referencing the 57 Tories who voted against the smoking ban. (Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“It is very important that until people have decision-making capability while they are growing up that we protect them,” Truess said. “But I think the whole idea that we can protect adults from themselves is hugely problematic.”
Supporters of the ban claim that the addictive nature of nicotine products takes away an individual’s freedom to make a free decision about consuming them.
