Even before the credit crisis took hold, smokers flinched at paying £5.22 for a packet of 20 Lambert & Butler.

Now that recession is gripping the country, they are increasingly turning to cheaper hand-rolling tobacco to get their nicotine fix. According to Imperial Tobacco, Britain’s biggest cigarette company and the owner of Golden Virginia and Drum, the volume of hand-rolling tobacco sold by the group in the UK rose by 7 per cent to 3,750 tonnes last year and the company believes it is on course for another significant increase in 2009.

Imperial, which also owns Rizla cigarette papers, has attributed the continued surge in roll-your-own cigarettes to both the economic down-turn and the fact that more women and younger smokers are turning to the likes of Golden Virginia. Once the territory of Andy Capp-types, younger women are increasingly becoming partial to roll-ups.

Imperial Tobacco told The Times: “The consumer base for roll-your-own has changed in recent years. It was once the sole domain of older male smokers but has become more socially acceptable among adult smokers of all ages and both men and women.” About one in four smokers roll their own in the UK.

While Imperial says that the surge in sales of rolling tobacco has extended over the past four years, the increase in demand has been so strong that it has recently introduced discount roll-your-own brands. In November 2007, it launched Gold Leaf – a value brand – and Golden Virginia Yellow in March this year.

Imperial added that an increased number of smokers are “dualling” – smoking both roll-ups and regular cigarette brands.

A spokesman for Forest, the pro-smoking pressure group, said: “There are far more people smoking roll-ups, partly because of the cost, but partly because of the fashion element. Roll-ups have a slightly more anti-establishment feel to them. Cigarettes are getting more and more expensive, and in a recession you can hardly say they are essentials. No matter how addicted you are to tobacco, you can live without it, it is still a discretionary item. People trade down, especially when they are skint.”

Ash, the anti-smoking group, points out that during a recession, while the prohibitive cost of tobacco increases the incentive to quit, many of those who do not give up downgrade from cigarettes to rolling tobacco.

While it is difficult to compare the price of ordinary cigarettes with rolling tobacco – because roll-up smokers choose how much tobacco they use in each cigarette – the recommended retail price of a packet of 20 Lambert & Butler, a cheaper brand, is £5.22. A 12.5gm pouch of rolling tobacco costs £2.99, while a 25gm pouch costs £5.87.

Part of the reason why rolling tobacco is cheaper is that HM Revenue & Customs charges less tax on loose tobacco. The average tax take on a packet of cigarettes ranges from between 75 and 90 per cent of the total price, whereas roll-your-own tobacco is taxed at just below 70 per cent.

However, while more smokers are turning to roll-ups, many existing roll-your-own users are, paradoxically. finding that they have to pay more for their tobacco pouches.

In 2007, the Treasury launched a big clampdown on tobacco smuggling. In the past, smugglers had bought rolling tobacco from the Benelux countries, where tax is lower. Many smokers had then bought their discount pouches from market stalls and pubs.

However, according to a report published by HM Revenue & Customs, the amount of hand-rolling tobacco legally on sale in the UK has risen from 3,454 tonnes in 2006 to 4,154 tonnes in 2008, as smokers have since been forced to buy nonsmuggled tobacco.

While it is estimated that about one third of roll-your-own smokers use filters, some health experts argue that there is little difference in the health risks posed by filtered cigarettes and roll-ups.

Hooked on a ‘loathsome’ habit

- The various species of tobacco are contained in nicotiana, the plant genus

- The word nicotiana (as well as nicotine) recalls Jean Nicot, the French ambassador to Portugal, who in 1559 sent it as a medicine to the court of Catherine de’ Medici in France

- The World Health Organisation says that smoking is the principal avoidable cause of premature death in the UK

- James I was widely known to detest the “loathsome” habit of smoking but he encouraged it to increase tax revenues

About a third of the world adult population smokes

- Attempts to introduce “safe” nonaddictive tobacco, mostly in cigarette form, have had little success since the dangers of smoking first emerged in the middle of the last century

- The use of tobacco in the form of cigarettes may have been encouraged by soldiers returning from the Crimean War, who had seen their Ottoman Turkish allies smoking them

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