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MPs have backed calls for cigarette vending machines to be banned.
At a meeting hosted on Tuesday by the British Heart Foundation, former cabinet minister Ian McCartney said Parliament had an "absolute duty" to close a "loophole" which allowed people under the age of 18 to purchase cigarettes.
And Liberal Democrat MP Bob Russell gave his backing to the campaign, saying there have been "massive advances in the anti-smoking process, but there is a long way to go".
Peter Hollins, chief executive of the BHF, noted that every year in the UK some 114,000 people die as a result of smoking.
"Smokers are almost twice as likely to have a fatal heart attack as non-smokers," he said.
While only one per cent of cigarettes are sold through vending machines, he said Department of Health statistics show that in 2006 more than one in six children who were regular smokers said they bought cigarettes from vending machines.
"There are a whole load of fixes which are suggested as an alternative to an outright ban - age verification technology and a variety of other technical gizmos, all of which, as far as we are concerned, are entirely unproven and in practice are unlikely to be used," Hollins added.
"We cannot see the case for continuing with cigarette vending machines."
And McCartney said the tobacco industry "kills a customer every minute of every day".
"Young people are targeted in our communities every day to take up smoking," he said. "Why? Because their relatives are already dying prematurely because of smoking."
The BHF is backing amendments to the Health Bill, currently being considered by Parliament, to ban cigarette vending machines.
McCartney said it was time to "get rid of what I think is the last loophole in the progress that we have made over the last decade or more in tackling the issues around tobacco smoking and the powerful lobby that surrounds it".
"We have a duty in this House to close that loophole, an absolute duty," he added.
"This country's talent is its people. Its future is its children. We have to protect that talent and that future.
"That means banning vending machines. It's a life and death issue as far as I'm concerned. I'm voting for life every time.
"The tobacco industry will try and tell you that this is a regulation to far. Well, if we have to have 1,000 regulations to save 1,000 lives, let's do it."
And Russell told the event: "I certainly back the whole campaign here."
Noting that the Commons used to sell its own branded cigarettes, he said that "things have advanced".
"There have been massive advances in the anti-smoking process, but there is a long way to go," he noted.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd
Gerald
25th Jun 2009 at 5:08 pm