The UK’s tobacco-free generation policy does more than simply restrict future tobacco sales. It should also be seen as a policy intended to reshape how smoking is socially understood. Under the Tobacco and Vapes Act [1], people born on or after 1 January 2009 will never be legally sold or supplied tobacco. Unlike fixed age limits, which imply that smoking becomes acceptable in adulthood, this approach removes the idea that there is any stage of life at which smoking is acceptable. That shift reflects a move from controlling smoking uptake towards policies that seek to progressively denormalize smoking, through what has been described as a ‘generational firebreak’