Cigarette age limit call by health group

Anti-smoking campaigners in the North East are calling for the age limit to buy cigarettes to be increased to 21.

Fresh says the measures will prevent more young people from taking up smoking.

The call was made to mark World No Tobacco Day – May 31 – and follows a new global study published in The Lancet which found that that three quarters of the world’s smokers have their first cigarette by 21 and the average age of regular smoking is 19.

Modelling by academics indicates that raising the age of sale to 21 would lead to a 30% reduction in the number of smokers - from 364,000 to 255,000 in year one and, after that, 18,000 new smokers a year would be prevented.

Ailsa Rutter OBE, director of Fresh, said: “Smoking is an addiction which usually begins during childhood. In the North East, the average age that children start to smoke is even younger, at about 15.

"The tobacco industry profits from the lifetime of addiction, robbing people in the North East of loved ones and denying them many years of healthy life. “Tobacco is addictive and kills one in every two smokers. No other product on our shop shelves does this.

"That is why it needs to be treated differently. We need action from the Government to make smoking history for more children in the future.”

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of anti-smoking group ASH, said: “Raising the age of sale to 21 could protect more than a hundred thousand people from a lethal addiction which many struggle their whole lives to quit.”