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THE legal age for buying cigarettes in Scotland is to rise from 16 to 18 next month, after MSPs unanimously backed a change in the law. ...

THE legal age for buying cigarettes in Scotland is to rise from 16 to 18 next month, after MSPs unanimously backed a change in the law.The move attracted cross-party support. It was met with criticism from retailers who said that nothing had been done to publicize the change.The measure, which will apply to all tobacco, will come into effect on 1 October. The same change will take effect in England and Wales.Shona Robison, the public health minister, told MSPs that measures like the ban on smoking in public places could not be viewed as "job done".

She said: "We need to start with our young people and discourage them from starting to smoke in the first place. The younger you start smoking, the greater the likelihood that you will continue to smoke throughout your adult life. Raising the age will make it more difficult for young people to buy cigarettes and bring it in line with alcohol sales.

"It will be easier to enforce and help young people resist peer pressure." John Drummond, the chief executive of the Scottish Grocers Federation, welcomed the measure. But he stressed no steps had been taken to protect shop workers. "Already retailers and shop workers face intimidation, violence and abuse when challenging some youngsters to prove their age," he said.

"Now with 16- and 17-year-olds set to lose their ability to smoke overnight, it is shop workers, not the police or politicians, who will be expected to enforce the law. Unlike in England, where the government has been working to get the message out there, all we have heard is a deafening silence."

Labours Duncan McNeil said it had taken two years for the regulations to come before parliament."Now at long last we have a chance to vote for a move which the evidence shows will stop young people taking up the lethal habit," he said. Mary Scanlon, for the Tories, said the party backed the measure, but said that over the last ten years smoking by 15-year-old boys was down 18 per cent and 12 per cent among girls. But she also voiced concerns about how under-18s would be stopped from buying cigarettes from vending machines.

Ross Finnie, of the Liberal Democrats, said the age rise on its own would not be enough to achieve its aims. He said enforcement in the area had been "very poor indeed" and that the minister had acknowledged this when she appeared in front of committee members earlier this week.