The United Kingdom's parliament has passed landmark legislation that will permanently ban anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 from purchasing tobacco, in what ministers are calling a historic step toward creating a "smoke-free generation." The Tobacco and Vapes Bill completed its parliamentary journey on Tuesday when the House of Lords approved final amendments, and will formally become law next week upon receiving royal assent.

The bill has had an unusually bipartisan passage. It was originally introduced by the then-Conservative government of Rishi Sunak, and passed its first parliamentary hurdle partly because Labour MPs — then in opposition under Keir Starmer — lent it their support, even as nearly sixty Conservative MPs voted against it and around a hundred abstained. When Starmer's Labour party won the general election three months later, his government revived and carried the legislation forward to completion.

The law works by raising the legal smoking age — currently 18 — by one year, every year, so that the cohort born from 2009 onward will never legally be able to buy tobacco products. The aim is to eliminate youth smoking entirely by 2040. A broadly similar policy was introduced in New Zealand but was repealed after a change of government. Beyond tobacco, the legislation gives ministers new powers to regulate vaping and nicotine products, including restricting flavours and packaging designed to appeal to young consumers. Smoking and vaping will also be banned in new public spaces, including children's playgrounds and the outdoor areas of schools and hospitals, though vaping will remain permitted on open pub terraces and outdoor public spaces.

Health officials and campaigners welcomed the vote. Health Secretary Wes Streeting called it "a historic moment for the nation's health," pointing to the toll smoking already takes — some 64,000 deaths and 400,000 hospital admissions a year in England alone, costing the NHS £3 billion in treatments and up to £27.6 billion in wider societal costs, largely through lost productivity. Hazel Cheeseman, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said the end of smoking was now "inevitable."

Not everyone is satisfied, however. Some vaping industry representatives warned that overly restrictive rules on flavours and product availability could push former smokers who had switched to vaping back toward tobacco, or toward unregulated black markets. The government will need to navigate those trade-offs carefully as it draws up the secondary regulations that will give the law its operational detail.