By Cathy Gordon and John Aston

CIGARETTES will be sold in standardised green packaging bearing graphic warnings of the dangers of smoking from today.

A last-ditch legal appeal against the move, by tobacco giants, was rejected in the High Court yesterday, paving the way for a raft of changes designed to prevent young people from taking up the habit.

All packs must allow health warnings to cover 65 per cent of the front and back, with the brand name restricted to a standard size, font and colour.

Experts and campaigners have said the move will “protect children” from being “groomed for addiction”. 

Sheila Duffy, chief executive of ASH Scotland, said: “Standardised packaging will help put tobacco out of sight, out of mind and out of fashion for the next generation, making smoking less attractive for our children.”

She said that it would take several years to see the full impact of the policy but evidence from Australia, where plain packs have been used since 2012, suggests it helps prevent children from taking up the habit and could help adults to quit. 

She said: “Big Tobacco has a long history of using legal challenges to delay legislation, making it less attractive for governments to pursue effective public health measures. 

“This judgment will not only let the UK get on and protect children with plain packaging, but should encourage other countries to consider introducing it as well.”

One in five people in Scotland still smokes and nine per cent of 15-year-olds say they are regular smokers. 

The EU Tobacco Products Directive has allowed the UK to go further with its regulations to require all tobacco packaging to be uniformly green with large images showing the harmful effects of smoking.

Packaging of hand-rolled tobacco must also be in the same drab green colour.

Tobacco companies have a year to sell old stock and fully implement the changes under the directive, which was adopted in 2014 but has been held up by a series of court cases testing its legality.

It includes a ban on menthol cigarettes from 2020 and promotional statements such as “this product is free of additives” or “is less harmful than other brands”.

Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International had challenged the legality of the new “standardised packaging” regulations in a judicial review action.

But at the High Court in London, Mr Justice Green dismissed all their grounds of challenge, saying the regulations were “lawful”. 

Gerard Hastings, professor of social marketing at Stirling University, said: “The introduction of plain packaging is another giant step forward in the fight against tobacco, which is still killing tens of thousands of people every year in Britain. 

“Over the last two decades we have blocked the tobacco industry’s pernicious marketing in the media, in our shops and now on the pack itself. The big winners will be our children “Today is a day which every parent, every teacher and every child can cheer to the rooftops.”