Health Minister Marjorie Michel said Wednesday that she is “looking into” the idea of banning future Canadian generations from purchasing cigarettes and toughening other tobacco product restrictions after such a law was passed in the United Kingdom.
British lawmakers last week approved the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which introduces a rolling age restriction permanently barring anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2009, from buying cigarettes.
“I’m looking into it right now,” Michel told reporters when asked if Canada might follow suit after leaving the Liberal cabinet meeting in Ottawa. “We saw what the U.K. did, but I’m looking into it with all partners for now.”
Justice Minister Sean Fraser said he is not part of any discussions that may be taking place when asked by reporters.
“I have not discussed that explicitly with Minister Michel,” he said.
“She’s my seatmate in the House, so I suspect we’re going to have a chat today,” he added. “I’ve got a personal opinion on it but I have not been engaged formally in the policy development process.”
Get weekly health news
Fraser said he supported “doing anything we can to reduce the consumption of tobacco products amongst young people,” and that preventing people from smoking at a young age would “reduce the social harm across Canada from tobacco.”
A spokesperson for Health Canada said in an emailed statement to Global News last week that “the government of Canada is committed to reducing tobacco use in Canada to less than five percent by 2035, a goal recognized internationally as a critical milestone for a smoke-free future.”
“The government of Canada works collaboratively with partners and key stakeholders to protect Canadians, especially youth, from the harms of smoking using the best available data and evidence,” the spokesperson said.
Sarah Butson, CEO of the Canadian Lung Association, told Global News she supported “bold measures” that are taken alongside educating youth about the dangers of smoking.
The British law is awaiting royal assent from King Charles III, who’s currently in the United States for a four-day state visit.
In addition to the cigarette sales ban, it also tightens rules around vaping and other nicotine products, particularly around marketing and display, and further limits where people can use vapes — particularly around children.
— with files from Global’s Adriana Fallico
So they want to ban cigarettes but legalization of hard drugs is beneficial? Give me a break lol
Never will happen unlike England Canada has an indigenious population that would make enforcment unattanble
Cant even rent a fricken apartment I’m getting forced out of house on cpp disability anf nowhere to go I have a standard poodle and smoke bad health gonna be living in my car so wrong you live on $1390 a month I keep bills paid but bank threatening to call in loans mortagage I’ve never missed a payment on ever . Just so wrong better off dead
So what’s next, mandatory MAID for anyone over 60? Outlawing oxygen?
Taking your cues from UK, a country with Orwellian monitoring of everything including thought, is outright stupid.
Stick to fixing the economic mess you’ve created, and keeping your election promises.
According to Health Canada’s own Jan 2026 report, the youth smoking rate is already almost at zero. Maybe it’s time to calm the hysteria and perhaps consider the possibility that youth vaping resulted in the sharp decline of youth smoking.
The government uses MAID to reduce the population but wants to ban smoking to increase the population?
I wish our government would refocus on the responsibilities for which we elected them. For me, those responsibilities include managing critical areas such as defense, healthcare, education, emergency response, and commerce. It’s essential for our leaders to nurture Canada’s independence and restore our nation’s reputation as a respected and influential entity on the global stage. My parents instilled in me a sense of right and wrong, and I believe it is not the government’s place to supersede the teachings and values they provided.
Why would Canada ban it when their own statistics show the taxes they reap in on tobacco and vaping out weigh the costs they are spending on healthcare?
Ahh Banada never fails
They can’t even control First Nation cigarettes in every East Indian store in Winnipeg!
It’s discrimination.
WE CAN NEVER SHOW ANY LEADERSHIP HERE IN CANADA, FOLLOW WHAT EVERYONE ELSE DOES. MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO. BEND OVER ONCE AGAIN, AND TAKE THE BIG ONE UP the A S S DRY !!!
1. “Taking away choice is fascism.”
That’s just toddler libertarianism with a thesaurus. Every law removes some choice. You can’t sell alcohol to minors. You can’t sell contaminated meat. You can’t dump chemicals in a river. You can’t murder someone. “A choice was removed” is not enough to make something fascism.
2. “Tobacco is legal, so how can they ban it?”
That’s backwards. Things are legal until legislation changes the rules. That’s literally how legality works. “It’s legal now” is not an argument against future regulation.
3. “What about alcohol? Sugar? Fast food?”
This is the slippery-slope escape hatch. Tobacco is unusually easy to distinguish because, used exactly as intended, it is addictive and harmful. It is not food. It is not nutrition. It is not a necessary consumer category. It’s a product whose business model depends on creating repeat dependency.
4. “Education, not bans.”
That sounds reasonable until you remember tobacco companies already survived decades of education campaigns because addiction is the product moat. Education helps, but pretending education alone solves deliberately engineered addiction is unserious.
5. “Government control!”
Sure, governments can overreach. But regulating a uniquely harmful commercial product is not automatically totalitarianism. That word has been flattened into “policy I dislike.”
NZ also tried this sort of ban. It was struck down after a couple years. Not only is it facist, but it is a waste of time and resources. Education and the right to choose, that’s been the Canadian way to deal with this issue and it has been very successful.
While we can all agree smoking isn’t good for any one, but taking away choice is called fascism.
Tobacco is a LEGAL product. I don’t understand how anyone can ban it.
In the UK the Labour left wing government are talking about banning smoking, drinking alcohol, pets especially dogs, online comments, any possible thought “crime” even before it happens, public silent prayer, any dissent from the government line, and on and on it goes in that country. Do we REALLY want to follow them?
No way should government be dictating what people should and shouldn’t be making personal choices over. Educate rather than dictate when it comes to choice on whether or not to smoke. The UK is no longer a free society, why should Canada follow their path. Oh of course … power and control by government that’s what is driving it.
I am not and have never been a smoker but I am a very avid supporter of free choice when it comes to people making choices in a free and democratic society. Once the Liberals make their imposed lifetime ban normal in society they will not stop there. No … Freedom of choice rather than a totalitarian Autocracy is what Canadians must fight for.
“Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.” David Horowitz.
The indigenous will have the whole cigerette market then. But I don’t care i don’t smoke but I do not condemn someone that does. These new governments we have will take everything away from us if we let them.
The goverment talks out of both sides of its mouth.
MAID for being sad or minor pain but also ban smoking cause of health.
What about fast food? What about alcohol?
At any rate, it wont happen. Too much money changing hands
For everyone
A ban would only make it cool again. Smoking is already on the decline, why give it appeal? Kids already steal cigs and mostly use e cigs. Heck the amount of pulls exist shows you can’t really ban it out. Unless we want to relearn the lessons of prohibition and the war on drugs.
Why not! The LPC is banning or regulating everything in our lives. Free speech, freedom of choice… with the way these idiots spend, they need the tax revenue… lord know it doesn’t go back into health care.
It is already illegal to sell tobacco or alcohol products to minors, but yet the youth still manages to gain access to these products. I fail to see how a “ban” would be any different.
I know this is in the idea of health, but I don’t feel great about the government coming in and banning something that’s been around for generations. What about alcohol? What about sugar? What about prescription drugs with serious side effects?
I understand that with vapes, there has been a resurgence of smoking but there are many other things that can be revoked if we allow the government to take control of our markets. Its a nervous thing for me to support as we have no say at all where this line ends…
If Health Canada came out with a report claiming that Ice cream is dangerous to our health (not too far fetched, considering how many items like butter and sugar have been mislabelled by them) Would the Liberals (or any government) have the right to ban ice cream, not only for kids, but adults as well.
Think about it… these are our freedoms that the government is considering taking from us. It was tried during prohibition, and failed completely. Such a move will fail again.
this is a slippery slope, what would be next? giving the government more control of what you can and cant buy is not a good thing, regardless of what it is.