The centre says tobacco use causes about 92,000 deaths each year, which equates to an annual loss of about 400,000 life years.

The UK Government has promised to bring forward an anti-smoking strategy in 1998. The White Paper will form a key part of the government's overall health agenda. It will also set out how the government plans to introduce the EU-wide ban on tobacco advertising.

Stubbing out the habit

Slowly but surely, Britons are kicking the habit. At the beginning of the 1970s, a half of all men and more than two thirds of women smoked. By the early 1990s, only a quarter of men and women were still using tobacco.

It is assumed that if large numbers of smokers give up, the NHS will make substantial savings.

This is not necessarily the case. Dutch researchers have shown smokers may actually save society money because they do not live so long. The study, conducted by the Erasmus University Department of Public Health in Rotterdam, compared the health care costs of smokers to those of people of more advanced years.

They concluded that in the long run, if many people stopped using tobacco products, costs would actually rise as a healthier population eventually moved into nursing homes and into the relatively expensive diseases of old age.

They calculated the average lifetime costs of a smoking man to be $72,700 - much less than $83,400 for the non-smoking man.

Some important facts about smoking