‘Just one cigarette a day carries greater risk of heart disease and stroke than expected, warn experts.’

This is one of many similar headlines in print and online today.

The findings are based on an analysis of 141 studies by researchers at the UCL Cancer Institute at University College London and they follow an unrelated analysis of 215,000 people by researchers at Queen Mary, University of London, that found that 60.3 per cent had tried a cigarette and 68.9 per cent became addicted.

Or, to put that in tabloid terms: 'One puff of a cigarette is enough to get you hooked: Two-thirds of people who try tobacco for the first time become daily smokers'.

The 'one cigarette' mantra isn't new but it's increasingly commonplace. The idea however that a single cigarette is enough to turn you into a nicotine junkie is, in my view, nonsense.

The simple reason many people go from that first experimental cigarette and become daily smokers is because they enjoy it.

The same is true of many other things – including tea, coffee or, dare I say it, jam doughnuts. You try something, you like it, and it becomes a regular part of your life.

Many smokers may in time become addicted to nicotine (or smoking) but to blame it on that first cigarette is ridiculous.

As for the alarmist claim that 'People who smoked even one cigarette a day were still about 50 per cent more likely to develop heart disease and 30 per cent more likely to have a stroke than people who had never smoked', did the researchers take into account other factors such as diet, individual fitness and socio-economic conditions?

After all, neither heart disease nor stroke are exclusive to smokers but that rarely seems to be taken into account by researchers who are more than happy to point the finger of blame at smoking.

I haven't read the full analysis yet so I'd better not comment too much until I have. What I strongly question though is the relatively new idea that cutting down is no longer a serious option.

I realise tobacco control has targets to meet but to reject such a well-established path to abstinence (reducing consumption before eventually giving up) seems rather presumptuous.

Not only does it highlight their increasing impatience to reduce smoking rates, it demonstrates a desire to control people's behaviour to the nth degree. Even if your ultimate goal is to quit, cutting down isn't good enough. You have to stop smoking NOW!

Anyway, here is Forest's response to the new orthodoxy:

“Quitting smoking can be hard and for many people cutting down is often the first step. 

"Discouraging it as an option could be counter-productive because smokers who want to stop may be dissuaded from even trying."

To this we added:

“What researchers consistently fail to understand is why many people smoke.

"Millions smoke not because they are addicted but because they enjoy it. For some it's one of their few remaining pleasures, for others it's a comfort.

"Health considerations are obviously a factor in whether or not people smoke but there are other factors, including pleasure, that determine people's choices and no amount of scaremongering about the risks of even a single cigarette a day will change that."

The Scotsman has our full response here and you'll find the odd sentence elsewhere (on the BBC News website, for example).