Smoking is linked to 120,000 deaths annually
On the 40th anniversary of the publication of the first report linking smoking and heart disease, doctors say many of its recommendations have still not been implemented.
Statistics show that more than five million people have died since the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) published its ground-breaking "Smoking and Health" report.
To mark the anniversary, the RCP and the pressure group Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) are calling on the present government to make up for years of previous governments' inaction.
They are starting by asking ministers to support Lord Clement-Jones's Private Members Bill to ban tobacco advertising, sponsorship and promotion.
It would extend the current EU law against broadcasting adverts to cover all media and sports sponsorship.
The bill is almost identical to one introduced by the government in the last session but which ran out of time and was then controversially left out of the last Queen's Speech.
The two organisations also want to see a far-reaching and committed approach to tobacco policy.
This would cover:-
Policy measures that reduce the motivation to smoke, including:-
Policy measures that motivate smokers to quit, including:-
Professor Sir Richard Doll, the man who originally drew attention to the dangers of smoking, said he was encouraged that many people had given up smoking.
But he said it was important to keep stressing the importance of kicking the habit. But he said the government had been guilty of sending out mixed messages down the years.
RCP president Professor Sir George Alberti said the original report was received with "ministerial indifference and inaction - a pattern to be repeated throughout almost all of the next 40 years".
He said: "I am deeply saddened by the lack of progress in tackling our biggest killer.
"The current government is more committed to action against smoking than any before, yet it too has faltered and needs to put the public health of the nation first."
Passive smoking risks
Ash has released figures saying the 1962 report did have some impact on relegating smoking to an anti-social activity.
Ash director Clive Bates said: "If people continued to smoke at the same rates we had in 1962 we would have an awful lot more dead.
"But three million people are still working in places where they're exposed to passive smoking."
In 1974, 51% of men and 41% of women smoked cigarettes - nearly half the adult population of the UK.
Today, about 13 million adults smoke - 29% of men and 25% of women.
Smoking is responsible for about 120,000 deaths every year in the UK.
It is estimated that several hundred cases of lung cancer and several thousand cases of heart disease in non-smokers in the UK are caused annually by passive smoking - inhaling other people's tobacco smoke.