A proposal to raise the legal age of smoking year by year so that eventually no one can buy tobacco and cigarettes has met with a mixed response in the UK, with critics slamming it as an attempt at “creeping prohibition.”
A government-commissioned review has said that the minimum age at which people can buy a tobacco product in England should go up by a year annually until the point where no one can buy them.
Dr. Javed Khan, who led the study into how England can become smoke-free, put the annual cost to society of smoking at around £17 billion ($21 billion) and said “making smoking obsolete in England would lift around 2.6 million adults and one million children out of poverty.”…