推行禁烟竟如此艰难
It’s Maddeningly Difficult to Ban Smoking
文本难度：六级（CET-6）
刘立军供稿
The U.K.’s landmark generational cigarette ban, which received royal assent in April 2026 and is due to take effect in January 2027, might yield its most dramatic results decades from now, if it sticks around that long.
英国具有里程碑意义的代际禁烟法案于2026年4月获得王室批准，并将于2027年1月正式生效。英国新近出台的禁烟令若能持续落地执行，或许要在数十年后才能显现出最显著的效果。
Since tobacco first arrived on the shores of England in the late 16th century, some Brits have wanted to eradicate it. Back in 1604, King James I was so alarmed about his country’s new smoking habit that he imposed a 4,000 percent tariff on the crop. That year, he wrote one of the world’s first anti-tobacco essays, declaring smoking “loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs.”
自16世纪末烟草传入英国起，就有部分英国人希望彻底根除烟草。1604年，詹姆斯一世国王就对国内兴起的吸烟风气深感忧虑，于是对烟草征收税率高达4000%的关税。同年，他撰写了世界上最早的反烟草论著之一，称吸烟“触目生厌、刺鼻难闻、损伤大脑、戕害肺腑”。
Despite the best efforts of the king and the generations of anti-tobacco activists who followed him, people in the United Kingdom still smoke. Now advocates are hoping a new law that prohibits anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, from ever buying cigarettes will finally end the habit for good. But the tobacco-free generation, at least in the short term, is unlikely to truly be tobacco-free.
尽管英国国王以及后世一代又一代反烟草人士竭尽全力，很多英国人至今仍在吸烟。如今，支持控烟的人士寄希望于一项新法案：该法案禁止2009年1月1日及以后出生的人购买香烟，期盼以此彻底终结这一恶习。然而，至少在短期内，这个所谓的“无烟一代”，恐怕难以真正做到完全不接触烟草。
Generational tobacco bans were first proposed in 2010 by a group of researchers in Singapore. Around that time, less extreme anti-tobacco measures — such as media campaigns, clean-air laws, and taxes — had reduced smoking in many countries to such a point that public-health advocates started to seriously consider policies that could shrink rates to effectively zero. A tobacco “endgame,” as it has become known, was in sight. “I want to stamp out smoking for good,” Rishi Sunak, the former U.K. prime minister, said in a statement when he first proposed the plan in 2023.
2010年，新加坡的一个研究团队首次提出了“代际禁烟令”这一构想。当时，媒体宣传、清洁空气法案、烟草税收等相对温和的控烟措施，已将许多国家的吸烟率降至较低水平。公共卫生领域的倡导者由此开始认真研究，思考如何通过采取更为彻底的政策，将吸烟率降至接近于零。业界所说的烟草管控“终局”似乎近在眼前。2023年，英国前首相里希·苏纳克在首次提出该方案时发表声明称：“我希望彻底根除吸烟现象。”
Currently, U.K. residents need to be 18 or older to purchase cigarettes. The new generational ban will introduce a more unusual paradigm: Beginning on January 1, 2027, an 18-year-old born on New Year’s Day 2009 will not be able to buy products such as cigarettes and chewing tobacco for the rest of their life. But a friend born one day earlier would face no such barrier. That means, as some critics of the ban have pointed out, that 18-year-olds will almost certainly bum cigarettes from older friends — the same way younger teens have acquired them since time immemorial. Data suggest that most adolescent British smokers get cigarettes for free from older people they know. In one study, in which researchers interviewed British smokers as young as 12 about how they obtained cigarettes, kids who waited outside of tobacco shops in hopes that an older customer would buy for them reported mostly targeting people under 25.
目前，英国居民需年满18周岁才可购买香烟。而这项全新的代际禁令将带来一种更为特殊的管控模式：自2027年1月1日起，2009年元旦出生的青年，即便年满18岁，终身都不得购买香烟、嚼烟这类烟草制品。但如果有人仅早一天出生，则不受这条禁令限制。正如该禁令的部分批评人士所指出的，这意味着这批年满18岁的年轻人几乎肯定会向年龄更大的朋友讨要香烟——古往今来，低龄青少年就是这样获取香烟的。数据表明，英国绝大多数未成年吸烟者，都是从相熟的长者手上免费拿到香烟。在一项针对低至12岁的英国吸烟青少年的研究中，研究人员询问了他们获取香烟的途径。部分青少年会守候在烟草店门外，指望年长顾客帮忙代买，据他们反馈，自己主要找25岁以下的成年人帮忙。
Lawmakers included language in the bill designed to dissuade older people from buying cigarettes for their underage acquaintances. But, more importantly, that issue will likely work itself out over time. By 2034, no one under 25 will be able to purchase cigarettes. And with each passing year, kids’ sources of illegal cigarettes should progressively dwindle. Because having peers who smoke increases young people’s chances of starting themselves, fewer kids being able to get their hands on cigarettes should have a ripple effect, dissuading more and more of their peers from experimenting. By 2079, no one under 70 will be legally able to smoke. It will become the habit not of teenage rebellion but of retirement homes.
立法者在法案中增设相关条款，意在劝阻年长者不要为未成年熟人代买香烟。但更重要的是，这一问题大概率会随着时间的推移而自然化解。到2034年，25岁以下的人都将无法购买香烟。年复一年，青少年获取非法香烟的渠道也会日益萎缩。身边有吸烟的同龄人，会增加年轻人开始吸烟的概率；能够接触到香烟的青少年越来越少，将会产生连锁反应，促使更多同龄人打消尝试吸烟的念头。到2079年，70岁以下人群将不再具备合法吸烟的资格。吸烟将不再是青春期叛逆的标志，反倒会成为养老院里的一种习惯。
This all depends, of course, on retailers actually following the law — a big if, according to some tobacco-control experts I spoke with. In a 2023 NHS survey, one-third of youth smokers reported regularly (and illegally) buying cigarettes from shops. “I don’t think we should play down the need for enforcement,” Nathan Davies, a doctoral fellow at the University of Nottingham who studies tobacco control, told me. And even if shopkeepers play by the rules, other people might not. Consider the small Himalayan nation of Bhutan, where all tobacco sales were banned in 2004, but cigarettes remained easy to access because a black market quickly cropped up. Those dealers didn’t serve just existing smokers but also young children. In 2019, nearly a quarter of 13-to-15-year-olds in the country used tobacco.
当然，这一切的前提是零售商能否真正遵守法律——我采访的一些控烟专家称，这还是个巨大的未知数。英国国家医疗服务体系（NHS）2023年的一项调查显示，三分之一的青少年吸烟者称自己经常（且非法地）在商店购买香烟。诺丁汉大学从事控烟研究的博士研究员内森·戴维斯表示：“我们绝不能弱化执法的重要性。”即便商家恪守规定，其他人却未必照做。以喜马拉雅山区小国不丹为例：该国2004年全面禁止烟草销售，但黑市迅速滋生，香烟依然极易获取。这些黑市商贩不仅向吸烟人士供货，甚至把魔爪伸向了青少年。2019年，该国近四分之一的13-15岁青少年使用了烟草制品。
Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing Reform U.K. Party, has repeatedly insisted that such a black market could appear in the U.K. too. But the country’s experiment was not technically a generational tobacco ban, unlike the policy in the U.K., which was crafted to ensure that most current smokers can continue to buy their products legally, thus shrinking the profitability of any black market. The Bhutan and U.K. policies are “structurally so different in scope, sequencing, enforcement infrastructure, and market context that the comparison generates more confusion than insight,” Kashish Aneja, who leads initiatives in Asia at Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, told me via email.
英国右翼改革党领导人奈杰尔·法拉奇一再提出，英国同样可能滋生这样的黑市。但严格来说，不丹的管控尝试不同于英国的代际禁烟令；而英国出台的这项政策，充分保障大多数现有吸烟者仍可合法购买烟草制品，以此压缩黑市的获利空间。乔治城大学奥尼尔国家与全球卫生法研究所亚洲区项目负责人卡希什·阿内贾在邮件中指出，不丹与英国的政策“在管控范围、实施节奏、执法配套体系以及市场环境上存在本质结构性差异，将两者进行比较，更多只会造成认知混淆，而无法带来有效借鉴”。
No actual generational tobacco ban has existed for enough years to reveal its long-term effects. The Maldives, a small island nation south of India, implemented such a policy in November. Several Massachusetts towns have also passed similar bans. Brookline, a wealthy suburb of Boston, was the first, enacting its own version in 2021. Available data suggest the ban has had little effect on cigarette smoking thus far, but according to advocates, real change will take much more time. “It is a slow and gentle policy change which will result in changes over the mid and long-term,” Mark Gottlieb, the executive director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at the Northeastern University School of Law, told me in an email.
迄今为止，还没有任何真正落地的代际禁烟令已经过足够长的时间来验证其长期成效。位于印度以南的岛国马尔代夫于去年11月实施了同类政策。美国马萨诸塞州的几个城镇也通过了类似禁令。而波士顿的富裕郊区布鲁克莱恩则走在了前列，于2021年在当地开始实施禁令。现有数据表明，该禁令迄今为止对吸烟行为的抑制作用微乎其微，但支持该政策的人士表示，实质性改变需要更长的时间。东北大学法学院公共卫生倡导研究所执行主任马克·戈特利布在给我的邮件中写道：“这是一项温和渐进的政策，其成效将在中长期逐渐显现。”
New Zealand’s left-wing Labor Party passed a tobacco-free-generation policy in 2022. But the country’s new center-right coalition government, on taking power in 2024, repealed the law before it went into effect. The government’s stated reasons for the repeal were so that cigarette-tax revenue could pay for a slew of new tax cuts, and because it was argued that the policy would have fueled illegal smuggling. Something similar might happen in the U.K. Farage, himself a smoker, has called the ban “puritanical” and vowed to repeal it if his party takes power.
新西兰左翼工党于2022年通过了“无烟一代”政策。但该国新一届中右翼联合政府2024年上台后，在法案生效前就将其废除。政府给出的废除理由有两点：一是需要依靠香烟税收，支撑一揽子减税政策；二是认为该政策会助长非法走私活动。类似的情况也可能在英国上演。本身就是吸烟者的法拉奇，称这项禁令带有“清教徒式的禁欲色彩”，并扬言若其政党上台执政，必将予以废除。
He’s probably not the only one who’d like to see that happen. Tobacco companies urged Parliament not to pass the law, arguing that it was discriminatory and would not prevent youth smoking — and would increase crime, to boot. “Every year from 2027 onwards a generational ban will hand more of the UK tobacco market to the serious organized criminal groups who will use the proceeds of illegal tobacco to fund activities including terrorism, weapons trading, the distribution of narcotics and people smuggling,” Japan Tobacco International, which owns a number of the most popular cigarette brands in the U.K., wrote. (In a statement, a JTI spokesperson added to that list, writing, “Illegal tobacco in the UK has been linked to organized crime, including activities such as money laundering, human trafficking, and violence.”) The tobacco industry, along with smokers’-rights groups, also aggressively courted certain U.K. conservatives as the new ban was being debated, hosting them for lunches and at least one party.
希望看到禁令被废除的恐怕不止法拉奇一人。烟草公司曾游说议会否决该法案，称其具有歧视性，不仅无法阻止青少年吸烟，还会加剧犯罪。拥有英国多个畅销香烟品牌的日本烟草国际公司（JTI）写道：“自2027年起，代际禁烟令会逐年把英国更大一部分烟草市场拱手交给大型有组织犯罪集团。这些团伙将利用非法烟草的利润，资助恐怖主义、武器交易、毒品贩运、人口走私等各类犯罪活动。”（JTI发言人在另一份声明中补充道：“英国境内的非法烟草贸易与洗钱、人口贩运和暴力等有组织犯罪活动密切相关。”）在新禁令的辩论期间，烟草行业还联合吸烟者权益组织积极拉拢部分英国保守派议员，为他们举办午餐会，以及至少一场社交派对。
Despite the debate, generational smoking bans are broadly popular. A poll commissioned by the anti-smoking group Action on Smoking and Health found that 68 percent of English people support the new ban. In New Zealand, about 60 percent of voters opposed the country’s about-face. Perhaps that’s because smoking remains one of the world’s leading causes of preventable death, or because the overwhelming majority of smokers regret ever starting. The new policy might not make much difference for today’s teens, but decades from now, a new generation really might avoid that lifelong error — as long as the ban actually sticks around.
尽管争议不断，代际禁烟令仍广受民众欢迎。反吸烟组织“吸烟与健康行动”委托开展的民调显示，68%的英格兰民众支持这项新禁令。在新西兰，约60%的选民不认同禁烟政策的彻底转向。究其原因，可能是因为一方面吸烟依然是全球可预防死亡的首要诱因之一，另一方面绝大多数吸烟者对当初染上烟瘾后悔不已。这项新政策或许不会对今天的青少年产生太大影响，但几十年后的那一代人真的有可能避免犯下这个终身错误——前提是这项禁令能够切实长期推行。
【词汇】
1. time immemorial 太古时代，很久以前
2. dissuade v. 劝阻；阻止
3. dwindle v. 逐渐减少；缩小
4. ripple effect 连锁反应
5. doctoral adj. 博士的
6. repeal v. 废除；撤销
7. a slew of 大量；许多
8. narcotic n. 麻醉药；毒品
9. trafficking n. 非法交易，非法买卖
10. publicize v. 宣传；宣扬
11. proponent n. 支持者；倡导者
12. about-face n. （思想、行为的）大转变
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