As a former smoker, friends with other former smokers we have joked, in full black-humour sense, that the best way out of the smoking mess, is to reduce the cost of cigarettes for the old cohort who smoke, and let them die rapidly so the public health costs are a blip in the overall curve.

The problem is the young cohort. I guess if we let vape companies sell Disney branded pink princess vape kits, we might keep kids out of smoking, and so this really is a blip and we can continue our black-humour approach to public health and end-of-life statistics.