Today was Rishi Sunak’s first conference speech as Prime Minister and he vowed to raise the smoking age every year, to enable teenagers to grow up smoke free.
It’s not all that long ago that smoking was cool and even encouraged by medical professionals.
This looks pretty surreal nowadays, but check out this vintage cigarette advert from the 50s.
If you look through some old cigarette adverts from magazines, they’re full of health professionals’ endorsements for not only smoking in general, but also specific cigarette brands.
“More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.”
“LM Filters are just what the doctor ordered.”
“As your dentist, I would recommend Viceroys”.
And there are many, many more similar quotes from doctors, dentists and other health professionals joyfully recommending smoking to everyone.
Thankfully, evidence and research has dramatically changed people’s opinions and attitudes towards smoking since those adverts.
Rishi said: “People take up smoking when they’re young; four out of five smokers started by the time they were 20.
Later the vast majority try to quit. But many fail because they’re addicted and they wish they had never taken up the habit in the first place.
And if we could break that cycle, if we could stop the start, then we would be on our way to ending the biggest cause of preventable death and disease in our country.”
Downing Street said it expects that the plans will mean up to 1.7 million fewer people smoking by 2075.