OTTAWA — It’s illegal for kids under 18 to buy tobacco products in Canada and there’s a movement afoot to make sure today’s youth are never allowed to light up a cigarette — even after they come of age.
A law that will take effect in the United Kingdom in January will prohibit anyone born after 2008 from ever legally buying cigarettes.
In Canada, lobbyists are pushing the federal government to go even further by banning smoking and vaping products for the next generation entirely.
Sarah Sleet, CEO of Asthma + Lung U.K., said there has been broad public support for the move in Britain but it took decades of lobbying and advocacy.
“If you survey smokers, they do not want their children to be smoking. They know what a terrible thing it is, they know how bad it is for their health, they know how expensive it is,” she said.
The law also had cross-partisan support. It was proposed by a Conservative government in 2023 and eventually passed under the current Labour government.
The proposed bill initially included vaping products, but the final version is limited to smoking. The Lung Health Foundation in Canada wants to bring vaping into the conversation.
“Kids who vape are 3 1/2 times more likely to smoke tobacco in the future,” said Jessica Buckley, president and CEO of the foundation.
Sleet said some in the United Kingdom were concerned about the law limiting access to vaping products that are used to help people stop smoking. The law did bring in stronger rules on the sale of vapes, including plain packaging and a requirement that stores keep the products behind screens.
The British law didn’t come without pushback from the tobacco industry.
Eric Gagnon, vice-president of regulatory affairs for Imperial Tobacco Canada, said while he shares the goal of keeping cigarettes and vapes out of the hands of youth, the tobacco industry does notsupport a prohibition on smoking, however gradual.
He pointed out that Canada has gone in the opposite direction with cannabis by legalizing and regulating the product, despite research showing smoking and vaping cannabis is harmful. He also warned that a ban would feed the black market.
“Canada already has a huge illicit market, not only on cigarettes but on nicotine pouches, on vaping products,” Gagnon said.
Convenience store retailers are also opposed to such a ban and argue the illicit market has well-documented links to organized crime.
“Canada is unique in the illegal tobacco market, with one of the most sophisticated contraband trades in the world. Illegal tobacco products account for 50 per cent of the national market, and even more in some regions,” said Jeff Brownlee, vice-president of communications for the Convenience Industry Council of Canada.
Brownlee called for a national strategy to crack down on contraband.
In the United Kingdom, advocates’ research showed the size of the illicit market “is massively overestimated,” Sleet said. The British government said raising the smoking age to 18 from 16 in 2007 and 2008 led to a 25 per cent reduction in the number of illicit cigarettes consumed.
“What it takes is, obviously, strong enforcement,” she said.
U.K. research estimates smoking costs the equivalent of $5.6 billion a year in health and social services, and costs the wider economy some $32 billion. Sleet said those sums outweigh the estimated losses in government revenue from excise taxes and sales of cigarettes.
In Canada, the estimated public cost of tobacco use is $11.2 billion a year and as many as 46,000 people die from tobacco-related illnesses each year.
The federal government collected $2.6 billion in tobacco excise tax revenue in 2024, according to a report from the parliamentary budget officer.
Buckley and dozens of advocates plan to be on Parliament Hill next week for a lobbying push to convince the federal government that a generational tobacco ban could save health care funding desperately needed for Canada’s aging population.
“It’s very difficult to have levers to pull on the health-care side in order to reduce those costs long-term,” she said.
Buckley said they’ll also be armed with polling that suggests broad public support in Canada for a generational ban.
She said they have meetings scheduled with advisers to Health Minister Marjorie Michel and her parliamentary secretary Maggie Chi.
Canada has a national strategy to reduce tobacco use to five per cent of the population by 2035 — currently, about 11 per cent of Canadians smoke — and directs $66 million a year toward stop-smoking programs.
Michel’s office said in a statement that Canada isn’t currently considering introducing a prohibition.
“We continue to monitor measures taken by like-minded countries to reduce youth smoking, including the United Kingdom’s recent initiative,” said Alexandre Bergeron, Michel’s spokesperson.
From the other side of the pond, Sleet has a message for Canadian lawmakers.
“Be brave, go for it,” she said. “You’re not going to regret it.”