'Make cigarettes green and give them individual warnings', say experts

Making individual cigarettes green and printing "smoking kills" on them could deter youngsters from taking up the habit, according to a new study.

Tests funded by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) found printing warnings on individual rolling papers made young people as much as three times less likely to smoke.

Research published in the Nicotine and Tobacco Research Journal found participants were also less likely to smoke green cigarettes.

While overall smoking rates are down in the UK, as many as one in six 16-24 year-olds is a smoker. The figure is even higher in Scotland, at one in five.

George Butterworth, senior policy manager for Cancer Research UK, told The Independent: "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 pro-smoking pressure group Forest said: “Printing a warning on the cigarette 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."

The number of smokers in the UK is at a record low 10 years on from the national smoking ban in certain spaces.