My daughter is about to turn 15 and the teenage parties have started. If she’s anything like me (which she certainly is) I’m sure she’ll throw herself into them with as much abandon as I once did. We’ve already had chats about avoiding drink and drugs, but at least there’s one thing I know she and her friends are a lot less likely to try than my generation: smoking.

A new 'smoking ban' bill being introduced to the House of Commons today (Tuesday 5 November) means, if it passes through as planned, that anyone who is 15 or younger this year will never legally be allowed to buy cigarettes. The new Tobacco and Vapes Bill aims to create the “first smoke free generation” by gradually raising the age at which tobacco can be bought so, in theory, anyone born after 1 January 2009 will never legally be able to smoke. The same bill will also make it illegal to smoke outside schools and hospitals and in children’s playgrounds in England.

"When I was 15 you could basically smoke anywhere"

For some, the plans may seem heavy handed, but having been a smoker since I was 15 I couldn’t agree with the proposed ban more. As a mother who knows first-hand just how addictive cigarettes are, I could not be happier that my daughter is a lot less likely to be lighting up as I first did at her age.

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When I turned 15 in 1981, you could basically smoke anywhere - in cinemas, offices, planes as well as on buses and trains and on the underground. It also seemed to look cool – in films, sex scenes invariably ended with the couple having a post coital cigarette, and people would look forward to having a cigarette at the end of a meal. As soon as my friends and I were old enough to leave school at lunchtime, we’d be heading off to have a furtive fag in some nearby lane – and at the time a single cigarette could be bought for just 5p.

"Smoking remains the UK’s biggest cause of cancer and death"

At the time it all seemed like a bit of fun. The problem, though, is that the habit I formed when I was my daughter’s age is one that I still struggle with at 58. If there is any single piece of advice that I could go back and give my teenage self it would have to be: “Don’t start smoking – because you’ll quite likely never give up”.

Good Housekeeping’s Dr Sarah Jarvis is in no doubt that the ban is the right thing to do. “Smoking remains the UK’s biggest cause of cancer and death, responsible for an estimated 55,000 cancer deaths in the UK each year,” she says. “If young people have not started smoking by the age of 21, then my experience as a GP is that they are a lot less likely to start.”

These days, I smoke much less - perhaps about five or ten cigarettes a week and certainly never in front of my daughter. What’s had the biggest impact on my reduction is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to smoke anywhere at all, while climbing taxes on tobacco have made it an increasingly expensive habit. While the stereotype is that existing smokers are always against any new regulations around tobacco, I’m grateful for much of the legislation, which started with the ban on smoking inside pubs.

I see this latest bill to stop teenagers from ever starting in the first place as simply the next logical stage in making smoking completely anti-social. While it is certainly contentious to make something illegal for younger generations, and not for their parents and even older siblings, I believe the benefits will far outweigh initial reservations. And as the mother of one of the children who will surely benefit, I couldn’t welcome it more.