ANTI-SMOKING campaigners have backed moves which have seen standardised packaging introduced for cigarette packets and tobacco pouches.

Vendors have followed Australia in ensuring cigarettes or tobacco are now sold in plain packaging.

Health officials have said the country saw a huge reduction in smoking after the policy was adopted there in 2012.

The Quit Squad, the smoking cessation service run by Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust, has thrown its weight behind the approach, which is already underway and will be the law by May.

Spokeswoman Helen Hatcher said: “Standardised packaging could help prevent future generations from taking up smoking by making cigarettes less appealing. Having health messages and mundane looking packets simply makes smoking less attractive.”

Only the name of the cigarette or tobacco brand is allowed on the packaging, in a standard font and size.

Each cigarette pack must have at least 20 inside and public health warnings are larger.

But the enthusiasm shown by public health campaigners isn’t shared by everyone, especially supporters of Forest, the smokers’ rights group, and their director Simon Clark.

In a statement on its website Mr Clark said: “These measures not only infantilise every adult, there’s no evidence they will stop children smoking.

“Instead they’re designed to ‘denormalise’ smoking and, by extension, the consumer in the hope that smokers will be forced to stop or shamed into quitting.

“Inevitably the public health juggernaut will rumble on."