By Johannes Kniess

In the year before the 2024 election, few would have predicted that PM Rishi Sunak’s flagship policy wouldn’t be about taxes or Brexit, but about cigarettes. Under the ‘smoke-free generation’ bill, people born in or after 2009 would never be able to legally buy cigarettes. Those born before that year would remain unaffected. By phasing out smoking among the young, the policy aimed to gradually tackle the UK’s single biggest preventable cause of death, saving the NHS and the economy an estimated £17 billion a year and helping reduce socioeconomic disparities in health outcomes.

Public health advocates enthusiastically welcomed the proposal. Others, including many in Sunak’s own Conservative Party, were less convinced. In a scathing broadside in the Daily Mail, Sunak’s predecessor Boris Johnson wrote: ‘Child A will be free to smoke like a chimney to the end of his days. Child B — born only a day later! — will be a criminal if he does.’ Johnson, never one to shy away from bold historical analogies, concluded this would create a form of ‘smoking apartheid.’

Hyperbole aside, proposals for a generational smoking ban raise an important and underexplored question about the relationship between birth cohorts. Many egalitarian philosophers have long championed visions of a society of equals, in which there is no domination, no marginalisation, no stigmatising differences in status. Would withholding the right to smoke from some birth cohorts, but not others, threaten an inegalitarian, ‘two-tier’ society?

In my recent JME article, (Un-)equal treatment in the ‘tobacco-free generation’, I argue that this worry is unfounded. The idea of equal status is a complex one, but on none of its most important interpretations does a generational smoking ban violate egalitarian commitments. It does not disrespect the moral agency of younger and future age cohorts. After all, the ban isn’t based on an assumption that they’re less capable decision-makers. It is also not a form of discrimination that tracks protected characteristics, and withholding the right to smoke is not inherently stigmatising.

Granted, the ban would treat those born before and after the generational cutoff date differently. But this differential treatment can be justified: those who have already started to smoke have stronger reasons to insist on a right to purchase cigarettes than those who have not. Finally, while legislation for a smoke-free generation would be imposed on younger and future age cohorts without their explicit consent, this is not a form of political domination. If democratic norms are respected and the policy remains reversible in the future, it differs little from any other type of legislation.

The article does not offer a full defence of a generational smoking ban because it does not address all possible objections to it. Would the ban lead to a dangerous black market? Would it be effective in preventing children from accessing cigarettes? Would its enforcement overburden law enforcement agencies? These are important practical questions, which require careful analysis. But even more fundamental than its implementation is the ethical desirability of the proposal. By focusing on the idea of unequal treatment, the article disarms one key ethical worry.

As the dust settles on the election, the future of a generational smoking ban in the UK remains uncertain. Should the new PM Keir Starmer revive his predecessor’s proposal, he will need compelling, evidence-based answers to the questions above—not to mention the determination to take on the tobacco lobby. One thing that shouldn’t worry him too much is the idea of unequal treatment between birth cohorts. There is no principled reason why a smoke-free society cannot also be an egalitarian society.

Author: Johannes Kniess

Affiliation: Newcastle University

Competing interests: None

Author’s website: www.johanneskniess.com