A health campaign, the ASH campaign, has been launched to try and stop adults from buying cigarettes for underage smokers. The law about under-age smoking, and buying cigarettes for teenagers particularly is very clear however it would seem that some adults feel that by buying cigarettes for minors they are just doing them a favour. Sadly, that favour may have very negative long term effects.

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) have spearheaded a public health campaign called #NotAFavour. The idea of this campaign is to make clear the financial and health-related downsides of a minor starting smoking, as well as highlighting the fact that smoking is very addictive, incredibly so for teenagers, which makes it considerably harder for them to quit smoking later on.

The campaign will hopefully re-educate a number of adults, be these friends, family or even a stranger on the street who may be asked to buy cigarettes for a minor. It’s important that people realise that by doing this they are most certainly not doing children a favour.

Surveys show that thirty-six children each and every day, on average, decide to or start tobacco smoking. This an alarming number, despite the fact that the number of juvenile smokers has dropped in recently years. Thirty-six is too high. One new minor smoking is too high! The Public Health Minister (Scotland), Aileen Campbell has been keen to throw her support behind the new campaign, realising that most of the time it is parent, carers and other adults that are buying or giving cigarettes to youngsters, rather than them finding a way to buy them on their own somehow.

With selling cigarettes to children or buying cigarettes to give to children being against the law, hopefully more people will think twice about handing over tobacco cigarettes. This fact plus the ASH campaign #NotAFavour will, if successful, help eliminate this issue so that children can get back to doing what they are supposed to be doing, namely being children!

Now, some are likely to ask, “But what about vaping?”. What about vaping? Smoking and minors is obviously a serious and ongoing problem which could cause long term addiction, devastating health concerns and have a seriously negative financial effect on those who are now under sixteen. Vaping is completely different.

Vaping has been adopted by NHS Health Scotland as being a valid cessation device and an alternative to smoking. Even Public Health England, the government department who brought about the Go Smoke Free legislation which has effectively put an end to smoking in public places such as at concerts, on transport, at work and in cafes, pubs and more, has advocated for their use. Indeed, e cigarettes were listed in Stoptober 2017 materials, as a valid cessation tool in order to help individuals give up smoking for good.

Now that we’ve explained that vaping is nothing like smoking, we also need to say this; vaping is for over eighteen year olds only.  Children and teenagers have better things to go and more age appropriate things to spend their money on. The vaping community is very supportive of the over eighteen only restriction on buying vaping ecigs and e juice/e liquid which is great. Now all we need to do is continue to work hard to make sure that no-one under eighteen is smoking and to reassure people that vaping is just for people who have been smokers previously and who are looking to quit altogether or switch over to a cleaner alternative.