Result! MPs vote to ban cigarette vending machines and ‘point of sale’ tobacco advertising

We're delighted by the vote in the Commons

Just a very quick post to bring you the news that MPs have tonight voted to put tobacco out of sight and out of mind, passing amendments to the Health Bill that will result in two things:

• Tobacco will no longer be displayed at point of sale, and
• Cigarette vending machines will be banned.

The complete ban on sales of tobacco from vending machines is a new clause which will now have to go back to the House of Lords to be voted on. The Point of Sale clauses have now been passed by both Houses.

As regular readers of this blog will know, Cancer Research UK and our partners in the Smokefree Action Coalition have been actively leading the campaign for such legislation. And with your help and support, it looks like MPs have agreed.

We’ll post more tomorrow about how the vote went, but for now we’re just delighted at the result. This is a fantastic step forward in protecting people from insidious tobacco advertising and further lowering smoking rates. And it also exemplifies what we mean when we say: together we will beat cancer.

Henry