Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, has hailed the ban on smoking in public places for the way it had changed attitudes and ensured that smoking was ceasing to be a "part of life".
As a ban on tobacco promotion in large shops came into force in England on Friday, Lansley pledged to press ahead with measures to discourage smoking.
He said the new rules were designed to ensure all large shops and supermarkets in England must hide cigarettes and tobacco products from public view. "It's also about supporting smokers who want to give up," the health secretary told BBC Breakfast.
"There's more than a third of smokers who say they want to stop. Each year we have nearly 800,000 smokers who try to quit, 50% succeed. We want to continue to increase that proportion, help more people to stop." The Department of Health said the new restrictions were necessary because evidence suggests cigarette displays could encourage young people to start smoking. Figures released by the department showed that more than 300,000 children under the age of 16 try smoking every year. It estimates 5% of children between the ages of 11 and 15 are regular smokers.
Lansley dismissed the idea that young people could find smoking more exciting if tobacco was hidden.
"The culture is about moving to a place where tobacco and smoking isn't part of normal life: people don't encounter it normally, they don't see it in their big supermarkets, they don't see people smoking in public places, they don't see tobacco vending machines," he said. "We are going to continue to try to act against smoking for the simple reason that most smokers want to quit and it is the biggest avoidable cause of early mortality."
Lansley's strong praise for the smoking ban, imposed by a free vote in parliament in 2006, shows he has changed his views. In the 2005 general election he called, as shadow health secretary, for voluntary agreements on whether to ban smoking. Labour called for a partial ban while the Liberal Democrats called for an outright ban.
Lansley admitted in February 2006, when MPs voted in favour of the ban, that he was proposing a "complex" series of positions. This involved tabling an amendment to ban smoking in parts of private clubs to which children have access. But he voted against government plans as the Tories tried to ensure private clubs would be exempt from the ban.
He told MPs then: "The voting might be complex, but the principles involved are pretty straightforward. We must reduce smoking and the exposure to secondhand smoke. We should not permit people's liberty to choose whether to smoke to extend to a licence to cause harm to others, but we cannot allow legislation to intrude into the choices that people make in their private space."
Jean King, of Cancer Research UK, told the BBC: "We want everything we can possibly do to make cigarettes unavailable and inaccessible and something that children don't see as a normal product … we need to do everything we can to prevent young people getting hold of cigarettes." The Guardian
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