What is Sunak smoking? A British magazine attacks the Prime Minister amid chaos and division in the Conservative Party

The New European magazine attacked British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, asking, “What does he smoke?”, after his calls to ban smoking for future generations, amid a division within his party.

The New European magazine reported: “When Rishi Sunak says the country has turned the corner, the only thing left to ask is, what is he smoking?”

She added: "The Prime Minister saw the cigarette ban as his last chance to write a positive legacy, while this led to more chaos and division in the Conservative Party."

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to ban the sale of all types of tobacco to anyone born since 2009, and the law also aims to limit attractive advertisements for electronic cigarettes.

Sunak also confirmed strict measures against the sale of e-cigarettes intended for children, saying that “more efforts must be made to restrict their availability to children under the age of 18.”

Although this draft law will make the sale of tobacco products illegal to a specific segment, it will not prevent smoking absolutely. However, a number of members of Parliament from the Conservative Party see it as an “interference in personal freedoms,” and they explicitly declared their lack of support for the draft law.

Medical bodies and health associations expressed their support for the law as a positive step in tackling “the UK’s biggest preventable killer”, with studies showing that “smoking-related diseases cause around 80,000 deaths every year”.

Rishi Sunak's calls to ban smoking for future generations sparked a division within his Conservative Party at a time when the party is already suffering from a decline in its chances against the Labor Party before the general elections in the fall.

Conservative members of Parliament previously confirmed that “the proposal is not implementable, that it would lead to illegal tobacco sales, and that it is a slippery slope that could lead to a ban on fast food or alcohol.”