Health Secretary Steve Barclay is to stub out a plan to make the country tobacco free by 2030 - ending hopes of saving an extra 500,000 lives.
Whitehall sources say he is abandoning the scheme to raise the legal age for buying tobacco one year every year until no-one was able to buy cigarettes at all.
It means the tobacco sale age will stay at 18 which anti-smoking campaigners say is a missed opportunity to cut smoking in young people by a third.
