"The Government and Parliament had a substantial quantity of material to demonstrate the dangers of smoking by young persons, especially relative to their health in later life. They had a legitimate objective in reducing that smoking. The material demonstrated that many young persons obtained cigarettes from vending machines, which had no age‐restriction mechanisms to prevent purchase. It was an appropriate or suitable step, as part of a wider effort to reduce smoking, to stop young persons from obtaining cigarettes from that source. The material available suggested that age‐restriction mechanisms were not effective in respect that, even in a relatively calm environment, 20% of attempts by young persons to secure a purchase were successful. The Government and Parliament were entitled to the view therefore that such mechanisms were not effective to prevent sales to under eighteens and that only a complete prohibition would secure the legitimate objective of reducing sales by cutting off one source of supply. They were entitled to the view that the ingenuity of youth was quite adequate to circumvent age‐restriction mechanisms, especially in dark, busy public houses and night clubs. The court does not consider that the Government or Parliament required to conduct a series of empirical scientific experiments to establish the obvious but, in any event, the statistical material, flawed in parts as it might have been, was sufficient to justify this type of conclusion."