WARRINGTON Borough Council has backed the introduction of plain cigarette packaging after the tobacco industry lost a High Court appeal.

Under new legislation, cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco will have to be sold in standardised green packaging with visual health warnings.

A one-year transition period has begun, meaning that from May 2017 all tobacco products on sale in the UK will comply with the regulations.

Cllr Maureen McLaughlin, Warrington Borough Council’s executive board member for public health and wellbeing, welcomed the news.

She said: “This is excellent news and will help protect the next generation of children and young people from starting to smoke.

“This will see an end to the bright, glamourous packets which attract children in particular to this deadly addiction which claims almost 100,000 lives in the UK every year.”

In the north west, 18,000 children take up smoking every year and four of five youngsters in the north west who try smoking do so before the age of 14.

The chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health pointed to the success of a similar scheme down under.

Deborah Arnott said: “Standardised packaging has already reduced smoking rates in Australia – with this measure we too can look forward to the inevitable reduced appeal of smoking to children which will help save thousands of lives.”