UNDERAGE smokers in Scotland are spending more than £15m a year on cigarettes, according to a new government report.

Almost 3m packets of cigarettes are bought every year by 13 to 15-year-olds, with most purchasing tobacco from newsagents and tobacconists.

The statistics, compiled by the Scottish executive, have prompted fresh calls for a crackdown on newsagents selling tobacco to minors and follow plans to raise the legal smoking age to 18.

It has been illegal to sell tobacco products to under-16s since 1937. Shopkeepers who do so face a fine of up to £2,500. However, only 13 people were prosecuted between 2002 and 2005, resulting in six convictions.

According to the new study, 86% of 15-year-olds and 62% of 13-year-olds bought their cigarettes themselves. It also reveals that about 33,000 of Scotland’s 16 and 17-year-olds smoke regularly, spending more than £33m a year on 6m packets of cigarettes.

From next summer the minimum age for buying cigarettes is expected to be raised to 18, bringing Scotland in line with America and most other countries. The limit of 16 was set in 1937, before the link between smoking, lung cancer and heart disease was established.

More than 80% of adult smokers start smoking in their teens and about 13,000 people die in Scotland each year as a result of smoking.

“Selling cigarettes to under-age children must stop,” said Maureen Moore, chief executive of Ash Scotland.

“We need the community to find it totally unacceptable for someone to sell cigarettes to someone underage, in much the same way that drink-driving is unacceptable.”

Moore said she supported an expert working group’s recommendation for shops that repeatedly sold cigarettes to children to be banned from stocking tobacco.

Duncan McNeil, Labour MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde who proposed the higher age limit last year, said the new figures supported his call for tougher restrictions.

“Tobacconists, newsagents and corner shops need to take on board that society does not want tobacco products sold to their children, and that indeed by doing so they are breaking the law,” he said.

Andy Kerr, the health minister, said he hoped the age increase would also prevent younger children taking up the habit: “It is a sad fact that all too many young people start smoking well in advance of the current legal age of 16.”

Colin Finch, vice-president of the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, insisted that most underage smokers bought their cigarettes for “pocket-money prices” from bootleggers. “But we do support the age increase to 18 as we believe it will be much easier to police,” he said.

Times Recommends

• Secret files show Thatcher's role in coup plot
• Veterans to boycott Shell after ban on poppy sales
• 'I survived so please let Baby RB live too'