Charity warns smoking could cause 30k cancer cases in next five years

Now the leading cancer charity is calling for MPs to take urgent action and vote in favour of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill ahead of its second reading in the House of Commons tomorrow.

For it to become law in Scotland, the legislation must be voted through at Westminster and then MSPs will also need to back the bill with a vote in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood.

The bill intends to make it illegal to sell tobacco to anyone born on or after January 1 2009. That would make it illegal for children turning 15 this year to ever be sold cigarettes, with powers also included to introduce a licensing scheme for tobacco and vapes and extend smokefree spaces.

Cancer Research UK believes it could be a historic moment in helping prevent the disease and alleviate pressures on already overstretched health services across Britain.

Rosa and her granddaughter Kasia (Image: Steve Welsh)

Cancer Research UK’s executive director of policy, Dr Ian Walker, said: “Tobacco kills up to two thirds of its users. The magnitude of damage caused by smoking cannot be ignored and these statistics expose the lives that are at stake. 

“We know that smoking rates decline with government intervention. Raising the age of sale of tobacco products and funding cessation services will help to protect people from a lifetime of deadly and costly addiction.  

“The Tobacco and Vapes Bill could be one of the most impactful public health interventions in my lifetime. People’s lives are now in the hands of politicians, and I urge all MPs to vote for a future free from the harms of tobacco.” 

Recent polling data shows 71 percent of the public support raising the legal age of sale of tobacco products gradually to prevent future generations from ever being sold tobacco.

Research also shows that two out of three people who smoke will die from smoking.

One former smoker is Rosa MacPherson, and the 68-year-old believes raising the smoking age will have a huge impact on society.

The Alloa grandmother started smoking at nine-years-old and was a regular by the time she turned 12.

And she said: “As a 12-year-old, the health implications of taking up smoking didn’t really cross my mind. I remember at school being shocked at being shown a blackened lung during a talk, but my response to seeing that was to go outside for a cigarette.

“At the time, smoking was such a huge part of my identity. I was the one who had a pack of cigarettes in my school blazer pocket. Or when we went out cross country running, I’d push a pack of five cigarettes down my bra and my friends and I would light up at the park as soon as we were out of sight.”

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She eventually gave smoking up for good at the age of 51, having lost her husband to cancer three years previously.

Rosa’s father also died around the same time as her husband, and he had given up smoking 15 years before his death after being warned by a docto the habit would kill him.

She continued: “It was January 10 2007, a year after the ban on smoking indoors was introduced in Scotland, when I finally decided that I was ready to quit. I was with my sister and I burst into tears because I knew how hard staying stopped was going to be. But I also felt strong in having made a mental shift.”

Almost two years later, on December 7 2008, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer.

She recalled: “Doctors told me the cancer was linked to me having smoked all my life,” she said. “That was shocking to hear.

“I am just counting my lucky stars the disease was found at a very early stage. This meant the surgery I had to treat the disease was successful and I’ve been cancer free ever since.

“The fact that I couldn’t give up smoking after my husband was diagnosed with late stage lymphoma and died three months later, shows you what a powerful drug tobacco is.”

Since joining Cancer Research UK as a volunteer 13 years ago, the grandmother has been working hard to try and change things in the hope her granddaughter Kasia, who is nine now, will avoid smoking in the future.

She said: “For my granddaughter Kasia, I want her to live in a world where smoking isn’t part of life.

“I’m amazed it’s taken this long to recognise that tobacco is a legal killer. For all these years, tobacco companies have been grooming the nation’s children to smoke, to become addicts and, as a society, we’ve been condoning this.

“It’s time to do something about it. If these laws come into force, society will forever be changed for the better.”