Smoking gun Six decades since deadly secret revealed

It is more than 60 years since Richard Doll’s landmark study, proving that smoking causes lung cancer. The findings were so controversial it took three more years and further studies before ministers announced the link.

In America in 1964, the surgeon general estimated that smokers had 10 times the risk of lung cancer compared with non-smokers. Since then, the tobacco industry has battled to defend sales – arguing about the level of the risk posed by smoking and the relative risks of lower tar products.

Most recently, it has fought the introduction of plain packaging, proposed by the last Labour government.

In 2011, Philip Morris International tried to use Freedom of Information laws to gain access to secret data on teenage smoking and packaging.

The University of Stirling refused to hand over the insights, gathered from 6,000 confidential interviews undertaken with teenagers as young as 13.

When the coalition went ahead with the Labour plans, the tobacco industry began court proceedings, losing the case in May 2016, and losing the right to appeal in April last year – a month before the law came in.

Earlier this month, Philip Morris launched a new campaign pushing smokeless products, such as e-cigarettes, as healthier alternatives, and offering smokers help to quit, leading to scepticism from anti-smoking campaigners.