Car smoking ban may be next health crackdown

The report includes 33 recommendations to cut smoking rates and protect people from second-hand smoke.

Other measures suggested include plain packaging for tobacco, a 5 per cent increase in tax on products each year and using tobacco industry profits to pay for efforts to cut smoking.

The report was put together by ASH Scotland and Cancer Research UK, with input from a range of experts.

ASH Scotland said it favoured educating people about the effects of smoking in cars and the home, rather than a ban.

Chief executive Sheila Duffy said that 27.4 per cent of Scottish children are exposed to second-hand smoke in their homes, with 54 per cent of babies and young children from the poorest backgrounds regularly exposed.

"ASH Scotland firmly believes action is needed. We need awareness campaigns about the impacts of smoking on children's health," she said. "We need to ensure health professionals can help parents find ways of reducing these impacts, and we need to engage the public in debating how best we can protect our children."

Simon Clark, of the smokers' lobby group Forest, said: "Smoking bans, display bans and other initiatives are designed not to educate but to denormalise smokers and make them feel embarrassed, guilty or worse. This is probably counter-productive ... smokers are reaching for their fags in defiance, and who can blame them?

"The tobacco control lobby needs to have a reality check because the way they are behaving is incompatible with a tolerant, liberal society."

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said: "We're doing all we can to reduce the number of smokers in Scotland."