Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has described his plan to phase out the sale of cigarettes as the "biggest public health intervention in a generation".
The policy, if it gets the backing of MPs, will see the age at which people can buy tobacco products - currently 18 - increase by a year each year. It would mean today's 14-year-olds would never be able to purchase a cigarette.
The idea certainly seems a simple solution to what is after all an incredibly damaging habit. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable ill health - or put another way - around half of long-term smokers can expect it to kill them.
But the problem comes when you think about the mechanics of how it will work in practice.
No country in the world had done this. New Zealand has passed a law to introduce it but it will be another four years before it really starts kicking in and an adult is legally unable to buy a tobacco product.
But while an 18-year-old will not be allowed, their 19-year-old friend will be. And that is the issue, say the critics of this policy, including the Institute of Economic Affairs and smokers' lobby group Forest.
How can an arbitrary line be drawn, making something illegal just because a person was born in a different year? Surely an illicit trade in cigarettes will ensue? And what about policing it?
After all under Rishi Sunak's plan, which he wants to work with the devolved nations to introduce UK-wide, we will have a situation in 20 years' time where a couple aged 34 and 35 could be living together and one can buy cigarettes and one cannot.
Of course, once back home there is nothing to stop the 34-year-old reaching over and taking a cigarette from their partner and lighting up.
But in a way that is not the point. Sources at the Department of Health and Social Care, which has been looking at the policy since it was put forward in a government-commission review by former Barnardo's chief executive Javed Khan last year, say the intention is not to criminalise the act of smoking rather the sale of products by retailers.
It will be a job for trading standards to enforce rather than the police to crack down on.
And so far, Labour are not seeking to oppose it, while the Welsh and Scottish governments are makingpositive noises too, our political editor Chris Mason says.