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.
Deborah Arnott of Action on Smoking and Health said: “Any government worth its salt wouldn’t drop the Smokefree 2030 target.
“This is a failure of imagination and loss of nerve by a government clearly on its last legs.”
Former Health Secretary Sajid Javid ’s ambition was to get the proportion of the smoking population down from more than 13% to 5% - the definition of smoke free - in seven years.
He commissioned a report by former Barnardo’s charity boss Dr Javed Khan published in June to fulfil the Tory 2019 manifesto pledge to increase life expectancy five years by 2035.
Dr Khan said unless his measures were implemented the Government would miss the smoke free target by seven years.
He also wants to see ministers invest £125million to help people quit, vapes on prescription, and banning outdoor smoking where children gather.
Mr Khan added: “We need to make it as hard as possible to smoke and as easy as possible to quit.
“These interventions are critical. There can be no short cuts, no quick fixes, no excuses.”
And David Buck of health think tank the Kings Fund said of the sales age change: “This is a beguilingly clever proposal. It could help individuals, producers and retailers plan for long-term change.”
Ms Arnott favours an age increase to 21 which she says would reduce smoking in the 18-21 age group by 30%.
Smoking causes 75,000 deaths in England a year and costs the NHS £2.4 billion.
Tory MP Bob Blackman, chair of the all-party group on Smoking and Health, said: “Watering down our tobacco strategy would be hugely counterproductive when the Government is trying to reduce NHS waiting lists.
“For every person tobacco kills 30 times as many suffer from serious smoking-related diseases.”
The age increase has been scrapped despite Public Health minister Neil O’Brien telling MPs 12 days ago: “We are considering the potential merits of raising the age of sale of tobacco products.”
A DHSC spokesperson said: “We are currently considering the wide range of recommendations in the Khan Review.”
