As I was walking to my car yesterday I passed a few children on their way to school, nothing unusual about that but what I did find rather disturbing was the fact that the majority of them were walking through the town with lit cigarettes. As of 1st October 2007 the law in the United Kingdom changed and it became illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone under the age of 18 (an increase from 16). Now the group of children I saw were by no means over 18 and a few minutes later I walked past a young girl who could have been no older than TWELVE puffing away.

It would be rather naive of me to think that only people over the age of 18 would be smoking but whatever happened to underage smokers sneaking off for a quick smoke behind the bike sheds, when did it become acceptable to just stroll about in public smoking.

I have tried to find out what the legal age is for smoking, all I can find in the legal age for buying tobacco products which is a different thing (common sense would dictate that if you were not legally allowed to buy a product you were not legally allowed to use it), I know you are not allowed to buy alcohol if you are under 18 but you can drink it at home. So maybe those children were doing nothing wrong if they were given those cigarettes by their parents - I still think it is wrong.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.