Doctors have voted overwhelmingly to push for a permanent ban on the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 2000
The motion passed at the British Medical Association's annual representatives' meeting on Tuesday means that the doctors' union will lobby the government to introduce the ban, in the same way it successfully pushed for a ban on lighting up in public places and on smoking in cars carrying children, after votes in 2002 and 2011.
Tim Crocker-Buque, a specialist registrar in public health medicine, who proposed the motion, said it represented an opportunity to make the UK the first country to eradicate cigarettes. "Smoking is not a rational, informed choice of adulthood," he said. "Eighty per cent of smokers start as teenagers as a result of intense peer pressure.
"Smokers who start smoking at age 15 are three times as likely to die of smoking-related cancer as someone who starts in their mid-20s."
The proposal was supported by Sheila Hollins, chair of the BMA's board of science, who said it would help "break the cycle of children starting to smoke" and be a step towards achieving the association's goal of a tobacco-free society by 2035.
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