Rishi Sunak’s smoking ban was passed by MPs in Westminster by 383 votes to 67 this month. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will make it illegal for anyone born after 2008 to buy cigarettes, a landmark policy to create a “smoke-free generation”. The Times criticised the MPs who opposed the legislation, noting that “many were defending a killer, not individual liberty”.
Stanley Devon photographed a “new craze” at Oxford University in 1954. Undergraduates had begun smoking churchwarden pipes, which they found “cool and refreshing”. In 1927 The Times reported on comments made by the surgeon Sir Arbuthnot Lane alleging that pipe-smoking caused cancer. At the 1927 Tobacco Trade exhibition Sir Bruce Potter gave a stern defence, claiming that it was in fact the misuse
