End to the pack of ten of blitz on young smokers?

Packets of ten cigarettes could be banned because they are more affordable for youngsters.

Pub vending machines and shop displays of cigarettes may also be outlawed as part of a renewed crackdown on smoking.

Ministers believe the moves could save hundreds of lives by cutting the number of smokers and discouraging young people from taking up the habit.

But opponents warned that a clampdown on displays could backfire by glamourising cigarettes among young people.

Ministers will launch a consultation exercise this week on banning the display of tobacco products and the other proposed changes.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson said of the focus on under-age smoking: ‘Younger people are more influenced by advertising - 200,000 kids under 16 start smoking every year and their chances of a premature death from smoking are three times higher than if they had started in their 20s.’

Speaking on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show, Mr Johnson said: ‘Banning vending machines, where you can’t have any control over the age of the person who’s buying, happened in many other European countries a long time ago.

There have been startling results there.

‘On the ability to buy 10 cigarettes, I started smoking when I was a kid and you could get 10 Woodbines and you could get threepenny singles.

‘They have taken threepenny singles away but whether you should still be able to buy 10 cigarettes is an issue we need to look at very closely.’

Removing cigarettes from public display would make Britain’s rules on smoking among the toughest in the world.

Tobacco advertising was outlawed in 2003 and a ban on smoking in public places was introduced last year.

The Government has also raised the minimum age for buying tobacco from 16 to 18 and is adding explicit pictorial health warnings to cigarette packets later this year.

Latest figures show that 22 per cent of adults smoke, down from 24 per cent when the smoking ban was introduced last July.

Shopkeepers warned that removing tobacco from visible sale would prove

expensive because all stores, from corner shops to big supermarkets, would be forced to carry out refits.

Shane Brennan, of the Association of Convenience Stores, said: ‘The costs would be a major, major burden yet there doesn’t appear to be any evidence to justify the expense.’

But Deborah Arnott, director of the anti-smoking pressure group Action on Smoking and Health. said: ‘The Government is to be congratulated. Smoking is still by far the major cause of preventable death and disease, killing more people each year than alcohol, obesity, road accidents and illegal drugs put together.’