King's Speech 2024 - Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Tobacco and Vapes Bill 

“A Bill will be introduced to progressively increase the age at which people can buy cigarettes and impose limits on the sale and marketing of vapes”

• The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will deliver on our mission to improve healthy life expectancy and reduce the number of lives lost to the biggest killers, including cancer and cardiovascular diseases. 

• The Bill will deliver on the Government's manifesto commitment to introduce a progressive smoking ban. This will make sure the next generation can never legally be sold cigarettes, paving the way for a smoke-free UK. 

• The Bill will also stop vapes and other consumer nicotine products (such as nicotine pouches) from being deliberately branded and advertised to appeal to children. Together these measures will help stop the next generation from becoming hooked on nicotine.

What does the Bill do? 

• Sitting alongside wider support across the health service to support smokers to quit, the Tobacco and Vapes Bill will be a landmark step in creating a smoke-free UK. It will:

ostrengthen enforcement activity, allowing Trading Standards to take swifter action to enforce the law and closing loopholes. It will prevent underage sales of tobacco and vapes by providing enforcement authorities in England and Wales with the power to issue Fixed Penalty Notices for the underage sale of tobacco and vaping products. 

Territorial extent and application 

• The Bill will extend UK-wide, although the application of the measures will vary across the UK. 

Key facts

• Smoking is the number one preventable cause of death, disability and ill health. It causes 80,000 deaths a year in the UK, 1-in-4 of all cancer deaths and kills up to two-thirds of its users. Smoking also substantially increases the risk of many major health conditions throughout people's lives, such as strokes, diabetes, heart disease, stillbirth, dementia and asthma. Smoking increases the chance of stillbirth by 50 per cent.  

• Almost every minute someone is admitted to hospital because of smoking. Up to 75,000 GP appointments can be attributed to smoking each month – over 100 appointments every hour. Smokers' need for health care at a younger age creates costs, with smoking costing the NHS around £1.9 billion each year.

• Smoking drives socioeconomic and geographic inequalities in health outcomes. 230,000 households live in smoking-induced poverty. Children of smokers are 3 times as likely to start to smoke perpetuating the cycle of disadvantage.

• Smoking prevalence is higher in more deprived areas. In 2022 prevalence was 16.4 per cent in the most deprived decile, compared to 10.3 per cent in the least deprived decile. Smokers spend an average of £2,486 per smoker per year.  93 per cent of money spent on tobacco goes straight out of the local economy, a drain on the communities already at greatest disadvantage. 

• Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England said: “A smokefree country would prevent disease, disability and premature deaths long into the future. Smoking causes harm across the life course from stillbirths, asthma in children, cancers, strokes, heart attacks and dementia. Most smokers wish they had never started. Second hand smoke causes harm including to vulnerable people. The Bill to create to a smokefree country in the King's Speech would be a major step forward in public health.”