Health campaigners have set their sights on the tobacco industries, urging the government to levy them in order to fund anti-smoking measures.

120 health groups want to see the levy imposed on tobacco industries used for more sophisticated and direct anti-smoking campaigns and more stop-smoking clinics. The health groups have attached their names to a report by anti-smoking charity Ash, saying a greater anti-smoking push was needed from the government and experts.

Peter Kellner, author of the report produced by Ash, believes that "The NHS is facing an acute funding shortage and any serious strategy to address this must tackle the causes of preventable ill health…The tobacco companies should be forced to pay for the harm they cause."

The debate on smoking has intensified since the 1990s as more information on the habit was published whilst the public awareness grew. Smoking in public places was banned in Scotland in 2005 and in England in 2007. Smoking costs the NHS around £2 billion per year, tobacco companies make £1 billion per year in profit.

Giles Roca, director general of the Tobacco Manufacturers Association, slammed Ash, saying "Aside from the unwarranted intrusion on individual freedoms, this continued drive to over-regulate the UK tobacco market will simply create greater opportunities for organized crime groups involved in smuggling on a massive scale…These proposals are an unprecedented, unevidenced, dogmatic attack on a legal industry that would have hugely damaging consequences."

The debate between health campaigners and those advocating greater freedom of choice has raged in Britain for years. When the smoking ban was put into place in Britain, many people thought this would trigger uproar with people demanding the right to smoke in public. But the ban is widely regarded as a success, with most British people in favour of it. But as rumors grow of smoking bans in cars, the debate is set to linger on for many years to come.

LM/HA