Images highlighting the dangers of smoking will be printed on all tobacco products sold in the uk by the end of 2009, under regulations being planned. Manufacturers will have to start complying from October next year. After a public consultation, 15 images, including ones of diseased lungs, have been chosen to accompany text warnings.

Anti-smoking groups welcomed the move. But smokers' lobby group Forest said they were being "victimised'. "You could construct the same argument for placing graphic images on bottles of alcohol, but because most people like to drink, the government doesn't want to (do so),' Neil Rafferty of the union said.

The graphic ads come just before the minimum age for buying tobacco in England and Wales increases from 16 to 18, in line with alcohol. The government promised it would introduce warnings on cigarette packets in a white paper in 2004 and of late the European Commission has been urging members to do so.The uk will be the first eu country to publish such pictures.