Column: The future of smoking is set - we'll all grow out of it

In April, it became illegal in perpetuity for anyone born after January 1st 2009 to buy tobacco products. The last person legally allowed to buy a cigarette will be the last person born in 2008. One day some old guy in a care home will be the only one who still smokes till it catches up with him. That should be enough to end smoking, right? Apparently not. The Department of Health and Social Care is now consulting on forcing cigars into plain packaging. Cigarettes are already like this. They're hidden away in a cupboard and they can't have any fancy branding on them. I'm not sure if that's how addictions work. The nicotine I can take it or leave it, but that darned packets, I just can't quit. It seems to work. Fewer people are smoking than ever before, and with the generational ban, it'll be a bad habit of the past, as long as the remaining smoker doesn't last forever. It's unlikely, because they smoke. Cigars never were as ubiquitous as cigarettes. Most people only think of a cigar when celebrating the birth of a child, and we know the birthrate is down, so how much of a problem do they pose? If the proposal becomes law, every cigar box in Britain would be the same colour. Pantone 448C, since you ask. A drab, dark, matte brown. Much like the cigars themselves. The brand name could appear three times, in Helvetica, size 14 point, with only the first letter capitalised. No artwork. No logos. No colours. It's a counterfeiter's dream. I think I could make a copy of that in Word 97. And if you really want people to stop smoking cigars, don't use Helvetica, go for Comic Sans. Many could put up with a picture of a diseased lung on a pack but that childish, serif-free typeface just wigs me out. Normally I enjoy a rant about the Government control but this is hard to care about. If I hadn't have seen this news story I may never have noticed it. I don't remember the last time I saw a box of cigars in a shop anyway. When you think of cigars you think of Winston Churchill or Groucho Marx, and they're not smoking any more either. The future of smoking is set. We all grow out of it. This is basically a story about saving a bit of ink.