Scotland should strive to be an entirely smoke-free country, a leading campaigner said yesterday.

Scotland should strive to be an entirely smoke-free country, a leading campaigner said yesterday.

In her last major speech before her retirement at the end of the year, Maureen Moore OBE, chief executive of Ash Scotland, called for more ambition and vision from the Scottish Government.

She said: "Other countries have raised their sights and are aspiring to become smoke-free and protect and support their citizens from this deadly drug.

"New Zealand is already a world leader in tobacco control, backing up policies with funding to tackle smoking. At the beginning of the month campaigners in New Zealand called for their country to be cigarette free within 10 years.

"As part of the campaign to do this, some of the action they want taken is to remove retail displays, introduce plain packaged cigarettes, increase the tax on tobacco products and provide more support for people quitting.

"Their call was echoed by health organisations in Australia who said that if there was commitment from the government, their country could also be smoke-free within a decade."

She added: "As the Scottish Government works towards a smoking prevention strategy next spring, let's see them state outright that they want Scotland to become a smoke-free society and they will provide all the necessary support, funding, and legislation to do so."

She said the NHS can show that £200m is spent on treating the effects of tobacco but the costs on the economy in terms of losing work days through early deaths is less easily calculated, and the human cost is "immeasurable".