Cigarettes should be taken off display, says chief medic

Speaking in an interview with The Observer, Sir Liam Donaldson outlined a raft of future plans aimed at restricting smoking, including removing them from public display.

With England now officially smokefree, Donaldson told the paper that the move was just “a launchpad from which to make further strides” and advocated that cigarettes should be hidden away in shops.

“If you walk into the average shop one of the things that confronts you straight away is a wall of cigarettes. That's unhelpful. I'd like to see them remove the wall of cigarettes and keep them under the counter,” he said.

Donaldson suggested that keeping them under the counter would start to "denormalise" the habit and help smokers resist temptation