Why a tobacco-free generation won’t see the light of day through a generational ban

Sri Lanka wants a smokeless future, and so it should. But a Tobacco-free generation will leave the country with something far harder to control: an unregulated illegal market.

What is a Tobacco-Free Generation (TFG)?

TFG is a concept that has made headlines recently. The idea is that persons born after a certain year, in the current proposed idea, 2010, are not permitted to purchase tobacco products legally–ever. Older generations keep their existing rights to buy. The intent of such a regulatory concept is to eventually, in theory, eradicate legal cigarette consumption permanently.

The current discussion calling for Sri to adopt policy for a TFG would prevent the sale of tobacco products to anyone born on or after 1 January 2010. The stated aims are to stop new generations from starting, rather than only restricting access to those under the age of 21 and to gradually create a ‘tobacco-free’ or ‘smoke-free’ generation.

This is different from a normal age limit. As it will essentially lock an entire birth cohort out of legal access for good, turning a simple age limit into a permanent and growing prohibition.

Well-meaning ambition, a flawed mechanism

Governments are right to want a smokeless future and to keep young people from taking up smoking. The problem is that a TFG does nothing about the underlying drivers of smoking demand. It removes legal supply while demand stays, and where that happens, illegal channels expand to fill the gap.
So, the real question isn’t only “Can the sale of a legal product really be banned?” It’s also “What replaces it?”

Why it falls apart in practice

First, it pushes those without legal access to the product toward sellers with no safeguards. A legitimate retailer verifies age, sells products that meet quality standards, displays local, graphical and text health warnings, follows advertising restrictions and operates under licensing rules. An illegal seller does none of this. Illegal sellers don’t check ID, and they don’t care about selling to the underaged.

A policy sold as protecting young people can end up handing them to the very channels we most want them to avoid.

Second, it creates two classes of adults. One group of adults can legally buy a product.

Another, standing right next to them, can’t. The only thing separating them is their date of birth. That raises questions of equal treatment, proportionality and legal certainty – rights that national constitutions conventionally protect. It’s legally questionable and highly unworkable.

Third, it burdens the retailers who follow the rules. Shopkeepers would have to verify not just that a customer is an adult, but which cohort of adults. Further, as fewer adults can legally buy tobacco, excise receipts decline year after year while tobacco consumption itself continues via illegal channels. As demand migrates to illegal channels, governments lose tax revenue to untaxed supply chains while still carrying the enforcement and public health costs.

In tobacco-growing countries, falling domestic demand squeezes farm incomes, curing, processing and distribution, often in regions with few alternatives.

What happened where bans were tried

No country has yet shown that a TFG works in practice. Where bans were imposed and demand persisted, consumption eliminated.

In South Africa, researchers at the University of Cape Town found that during the temporary COVID-19 ban on tobacco sales, 91% of consumers kept buying cigarettes through illegal routes. Despite a dramatic price increase, that figure climbed to 93% three months into the ban.

In Bhutan, a total prohibition on the sale of tobacco products hasn’t brought youth use down.

The country has since reversed this ban and introduced the sale of legal cigarettes so as to manage the growing threat of illicit trade. A 2024 peer-reviewed global public health analysis found that tobacco use among school-going adolescents rose from 18.5% in 2004 to 27.3% in 2019.

Australia shows the economic damage too. Tobacco sales restrictions have triggered violent criminal turf wars and pushed 50–60% of the tobacco market into illicit hands. Federal excise revenue is projected to fall from AUD $16.3 billion in 2019/20 to an estimated $3.56 billion in 2026/27. That fallout has made the black market a national political fight.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has pledged that, if the Coalition wins government, it will cut the
tobacco excise by 80%, from about AUD $30 to $6 on a pack of 20, and legalise and tax vapes and nicotine pouches for adults. In addition, One Nation leader Henderson, has also proposed a 75% cut to tobacco excise to combat the same booming illicit market issue.

The lesson is the same every time: bans don’t work, and sooner or later they get reversed. Governments that have looked closely have hesitated

Malaysia dropped the generational provision from its bill before it passed, with Parliament widely citing constitutional concerns. New Zealand passed world-leading smoke-free generation legislation in 2022, then repealed it before it could take effect in March 2024.

Public reporting pointed to black-market growth, crime risks and the fiscal hit, as well as the fact that its existing harm reduction policies were already cutting adult and youth smoking.

The Maldives introduced a TFG in November 2025, becoming one of the very few countries to have enacted such a measure. With its minimum age of sale already set at 21, the ban won’t produce any observable effect until 2028 at the earliest.

The bottom line

A TFG may be politically attractive, but it’s no simple route to a smokeless future. It risks expanding illicit trade, weakening underage protections, creating legal uncertainty, damaging economies and proving hard to comply with. Worst of all, it may push the underage toward illegal channels instead of protecting them.