Research on groups of 15 and 16-year-olds has found the cigarette brands encourage teens to start smoking but that non-smokers would be discouraged from even trying them and current smokers would quit if cigarettes came out in ‘plain packs’.

The study conducted was commissioned by the Irish Cancer Society and Irish Heart Foundation and will be launched by a group of children’s and health organisations and by Minister James Reilly, later today.

The group said today that young people are the primary target for marketing by the tobacco industry which, according to the HSE’s National Office of Tobacco Control, “needs to recruit 50 new smokers a day to replace those their product kill, or those who manage to quit”.

More than any other tobacco control measure to date, the removal of branding from cigarettes will threaten the business model, which has enabled tobacco companies to increase profitability by recruiting new, young smokers, they said.