Butt out on cigs and stub out vape crisis

Smoking is a filthy habit that has killed millions of people. Every year in the UK, some 76,000 people die from it, and many more live with debilitating illnesses that put immense strain on the NHS.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s, and most adults I knew were smokers, including both my parents.

Mum quit in her 40s but started again 15 years later, after breast cancer had spread to her bones and liver – and she figured it couldn’t make things any worse.

And Dad only reluctantly gave up the Players after suffering a heart attack and developing emphysema in his seventies.

In my teens and twenties, I got fed up smelling of ashtrays after nights in smoky bars. Newspaper offices in the 90s and early noughties were also thick with cigarette fug and for seven years I dated a bloke who puffed around 40 a day. So, generation” by raising the legal age of smoking (which is currently 18) by one year, every year.

That would mean today’s 14-year-olds could never legally buy cigarettes.

However, the fact is, they are highly unlikely to try.

Smoking among the young has been falling steadily for decades.

In the 80s, more than half of pupils admitted smoking and 10% were regular puffers. Today, fewer than 12% have smoked and just 1% do so regularly.

Cigarettes are considered “gross”... too smelly and expensive.

Because today’s kids are far more interested in those colourful, enticing fruitflavoured vapes that are social media must-haves.

The PM says he wants to stop children vaping too “before it becomes endemic”.

But one top respiratory doctor says it’s already reached epidemic levels and young lungs are being damaged.

E-cigarettes were meant to be a route out of smoking for adults who wanted to quit. Instead, they’ve become a pathway to addiction for children because of cynical, targeted marketing.

Vapes may appear less “gross” than fags but the long-term health effects of chemicals in them remain worryingly unknown.

So if Mr Sunak really wants to protect the next generation, he should be focusing on them.