Cigarettes to be sold in plain packets in England

All shops will be banned from openly displaying tobacco products by April 2015 as part of new government measures to crack down smoking, reports marketing news sources.

Large stores will only have until April 2012 to remove open displays of tobacco.

Marketingweek.co.uk reports packets would be unbranded without logos or colours with health warning the only text on display. If these proposals were confirmed, England would become the first country in Europe to introduce plain packaging.

The Department of Health believe that unbranded, colourless cigarettes will put off the 200,000 or so teenagers that take up smoking every year.

Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, said in a statement to the Commons: “Smoking is undeniably one of the biggest and most stubborn challenges in public health. Over 8 million people in England still smoke and it causes more than 80,000 deaths each year.

“Smoking affects the health of smokers and their families. My ambition is to reduce smoking rates faster over the next five years than has been achieved in the past five years,” he added.

The Guardian notes that Lansley aims to reduce smoking rates in England from 21.2 per cent to 18.5 per cent or less among adults by the end of 2015; from 15 per cent to 12 per cent or less among 15-year-olds; and from 14 per cent to 11 per cent or less among pregnant mothers.