Description: Airspace Action on Smoking and Health
One year ago New Zealand introduced a plan called the “smoke-free generation” whereby starting in 2027 the legal age for the purchase of cigarettes will increase by a year annually in that country, so that anyone born after Jan. 1, 2009 will never be able to legally purchase them, amounting to a lifetime ban.
Last month they made it law. Malaysia announced similar plans last year, and many other countries are considering it. Over time such policies will morph into a complete ban on the sales of cigarettes, eliminating tobacco smoking entirely.
The big question, of course, remains: will it work? We all know the fate of alcohol prohibition in the United States a century ago — why should we believe tobacco prohibition would be any more successful? Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, on calling for a tobacco manufacture/sales ban in 2007, instructed “the real reason Prohibition failed is because the American public did not support it, believing correctly that most people could handle liquor without becoming alcoholics.”