4 ms·

Didn't know that - shame really, under-age smoking should be combated by enforcing ID checking.

• shocks 13y ago
  In theory, it is enforced by ID checking. In theory.
• DanBC 13y ago
  We tend to use a combination of measures. 18 is the legal minimum age to buy cigs (recently raised from 16) and shops should be checking ID. Ideally they check if they think the purchaser is under 21. We combine that with other stuff - advertising bans, placement restrictions inside shops, quantities sold, eye-watering tax levels, etc. Some of these are counter productive. The high tax rate means many cigs are smuggled into the country. And this is a route for counterfeit product. Legal cigs are harmful enough, but some of the counterfeit product is worse, contaminated with a variety of weird stuff. Banning smoking in public buildings (something I'm in favour of) means a few people smoke in their cars, but with their children in the car too. That's pretty bad. Many children are admitted to hospital because their parents smoke, and so increasing the tobacco smoke that children are exposed to feels like a bad idea. I'm generally tolerant of government regulation, but we have too much in the UK.