YOUNG people would be less likely to smoke if each cigarette was tinted green with “smoking kills” written on them, according to a cancer charity.
Scotland has the highest proportion of young smokers in Britain with more than one in five hooked on nicotine.
The figure compares with around one in six across all of Britain.
This could be tackled by manufacturing cigarettes in more unpalatable colours with health warnings on each stick, according to a survey by Cancer Research UK.
However, smokers group Forest said further “scaremongering” will not work, and would merely highlight the failure of existing policies.
Smoking has declined in Scotland from 31 per cent of all adults in 2003 to 21 per cent in 2016, while in England it has declined from more than 26 per cent to less than 16 per cent in the same period, according to official figures.
It covers the period when the smoking ban was brought into effect north of the Border in March 2006, which prohibited people from lighting up in many public places.
This could be brought down further with a health warning on the side of each cigarette, a survey of 1,000 people aged 16-24 suggests.
Young people were around three times less likely to want to try cigarettes with “smoking kills” written on them than standard cigarettes, and those who smoke already were the most likely to be put off by the change.
Green cigarettes were also said to be less tempting than standard cigarettes, the survey found.
Cancer Research UK say they are the biggest preventable cause of cancer in the UK and the leading cause of preventable death.
Scientist Dr Crawford Moodie, whose work is funded by the charity, said: “Cigarettes can be an important communication tool and that altering their appearance, with a health warning or an unappealing colour, can make them less desirable.
“Young people who start smoking are likely to continue to do so into adulthood, so anything that may deter smoking among this group could help to tackle the potential health repercussions in later life.” George Butterworth, Cancer Research UK’s senior policy manager, said: “Too many young people are still taking up smoking in the UK. Government anti-smoking campaigns and tax rises on cigarettes remain the most effective methods to stop young people starting.
“We need to continue to explore innovative ways to turn young people off cigarettes to ensure that youth smoking rates continue to drop. This study shows that tactics like making the cigarettes themselves unappealing could be an effective way of doing this.”
Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ group Forest, said: “We were told that graphic health warnings and plain packaging would make cigarettes less desirable but there’s no evidence that either policy actually works.
“Printing a warning on the cigarette or changing the colour of the stick will achieve nothing other than highlight the failure of existing policies.
“Clumsy and heavy-handed state interventions that rely on scaremongering invariably fail because the health risks of smoking are already well known to teenagers as well as adults.
“If the government wants fewer people to smoke the solution is not to impose more regulations on cigarettes but to encourage existing smokers to switch voluntarily to products like e-cigarettes that provide a safer yet pleasurable alternative. Smokers need a carrot not a stick with yet another warning that they will almost certainly ignore.”
Sheila Duffy, chief executive of health charity ASH Scotland said: “Cigarettes are a lethal, addictive product and over two thirds of adult smokers say they wish they could quit.
“Making cigarettes visually off-putting and more truthful seems like a good step forward in putting tobacco completely out of fashion for the next generation.
“Too many lives have already been lost to a product that has been sold mainly on image and empty promises.”
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