Rarer Cancers Forum is one of a hundred national, regional and local organisations and medical and scientific experts that have signed a full-page advertisement appearing in The Observer newspaper urging members of the House of Lords to vote to end tobacco displays in shops and ban sales of tobacco from vending machines. 

The Report Stage of the Health Bill starts on 28 April and Rarer Cancers Forum is urging the Lords to vote to put tobacco out of sight in order to protect children from the eye-catching tobacco displays that are often sited next to the sweet counters in corner shops.  

As Cancer Research UK highlights, smoking is the single biggest cause of cancer in the world.  In the United Kingdom it accounts for one in four cancer deaths and kills five times more people than road accidents, overdoses, murder, suicide and HIV all put together.

Smoking causes nine in ten cases of lung cancer and increases the risk of over a dozen other cancers including cancers of the mouth, larynx, oesophagus, liver, pancreas, stomach, kidney, bladder and cervix, as well as some types of leukaemia.

By the age of 15, one in five children have become regular smokers.  Research from Cancer Research UK has shown that trying just one cigarette can make children more likely to start smoking several years later.