The restrictions on smokers are just – but what will be next?

The restrictions on smoking are welcome, but now, with the constraints on retail displays and multiple rules on smoking in public places, we are probably pushing at the limits of prohibition by fiat

The packaging of cigarettes is set to change, and ten packs of cigarettes will be banned (PA)

Smokers are no doubt used to a steadily more hostile environment for them to enjoy their dangerous habit, but the latest round of deterrent measures mark something of a step change in the official war on tobacco.

That it is such is clear from the high profile legal action the world’s four largest tobacco companies launched to prevent these draconian, but perfectly defensible, measures. Rightly, Big Tobacco lost the case: it was bound to.

So it will be that soon every pack of cigarettes will be largely devoted to health warnings of the most dire and explicit kind, with the remainder of the pack left in a rather unglamorous shade of green. Rolling tobacco will be similarly labelled. Packs of ten cigarettes, apparently designed for the poorer smoker or those in denial about their addiction, will simply be banned. Menthol cigarettes, always something of an oddity, will also be phased out.

All very welcome, but now, with the restrictions on retail displays and multiple rules on smoking in public places, we are probably pushing at the limits of prohibition by fiat. The authorities could try to ban smoking in open spaces, such as streets and parks, but that might well be too difficult to enforce, and thus bring the effort to bring smoking rates further down into disrepute.

Even so, a ban on tobacco such as we apply to various other addictive drugs is no longer the stuff of far-out fantasy, and it will be interesting to see which territory in the world decides to try its luck there first. It may well be one where cannabis is being legalised, which would beg a few questions.

In any case, for the time being the next best move to push tobacco consumption down still further would be a sharp escalation in duty, such as the Australians are pursuing. By 2020 Australians will have to pay about £20 per pack of 20 cigarettes, proving that their government is serious about both changing traditional attitudes by fiscal force, and improving Australians’ health. It is long past time when rises in tobacco duty were seen in most western countries as electorally unpopular, and it is another consensual measure that this newly centrist Cameron government could easily take in future budgets.

Although there would be more smuggling, including of crudely made cigarettes with quite frighteningly lethal blends of ingredients, it would further push tobacco consumption from the “normal” to the “abnormal” sphere. It would save more than a few lives, too.