DoH announces increase in tobacco-purchase age

The government has announced that it is to raise the minimum legal age that people can purchase cigarettes from 16 to 18-years-old in October 2007.

The Department of Health (DoH) states that the new law will follow the ban on smoking in public places which comes into effect on July 1st and will be supported by the launch of a new campaign to increase awareness of the smoking age increase.

Government figures show that nine per cent of people between the ages of 11 and 15 now smoke, with 70 per cent of those saying they purchase their cigarettes from small shops – a trend the government states the new law will address.

Public Health Minister Caroline Flint claims that there is a greater risk that young people will become “life-long” smokers if they start from an early age and that buying cigarettes is now “too easy” for people under the present minimum legal age.

“Someone who starts smoking aged 15 is three times more likely to die of cancer due to smoking than someone who starts in their late 20s,” she comments.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association welcomed the move as a positive step, but called for more to be done to “discourage” people from smoking, the BBC reports.