For women, rolling your own is cool

The ban on smoking in public places has taken its toll on sales of cigarettes but there is one tobacco market that is flourishing: young people, women in particular, are taking a leaf out of Andy Capp's book to start rolling their own cigarettes.

'Roll your own has been one of the success stories of the past years,' said Paul Batchelor, trading manager at Nisaway, the company that supplies produce to all independent stores across Britain. 'Young, urban, fashionable people have started subverting the convention of the old, working-class man to roll his own fags. Partly, I suspect, it's the shock element. Young people enjoy turning the convention on its head, and young women in particular like doing something that was so firmly off-limits to them until very recently.

'There's an unmistakeable element of coolness in rolling your own cigarette,' he added. 'You see young people competing in pub gardens to roll the smoothest or thinnest ciggy. What we are also seeing is that the young people who started rolling their own cigarettes at university because they were cheap, no longer move on to manufactured cigarettes once they became older and more affluent, which is what they used to do. What we're seeing now is that as young people leave university and enter the world of conventional work, as accountants and lawyers, they continue to roll their own cigarettes,' he said.

Smoking is, according to market analysts Nielsen, a market in decline. Sales of cigarettes are down almost 4 per cent year on year, with the slope becoming steeper in recent months: in the last quarter of 2007, sales were down 6.7 per cent. The roll-your-own category, however, is now one of the most dynamic sectors of the market with volume up 7 per cent and value up 12 per cent in the 12 months to December 2007. 'Roll your own has always appealed to older, male smokers, but now there are 1.9 million female smokers, up from 1.7 million in 2005,' Iain Watkins, trade communications manager from Imperial Tobacco told the Grocer magazine. 'This rise is largely due to the rise in younger smokers, which is giving it a funkier edge.'

John Catania, managing director of Swedish Match UK, the company that produces Swan rolling papers, agreed. 'Roll your own tobacco used to be a smoking trend restricted to the sort of men who wore flat caps and kept whippets, but we now know it is gaining popularity among the younger generations.'

The trend is one that concerns Robert West, professor of health psychology and director of tobacco studies at the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Unit. 'There seems to be a weird belief, particularly among young women, that it's healthier to smoke hand-rolled cigarettes than manufactured ones because there are fewer additives in loose tobacco,' he said.

'This belief continues despite evidence that those who roll their own cigarettes end up with higher levels of tobacco in their lungs than those who smoke manufactured cigarettes.'

The ban on cigarette advertising has had other effects on the type of tobacco products that people buy. Some smokers, say the experts, have taken the view that if they have less time to smoke they will smoke fewer but they choose products that are of a higher premium.

This is how James Higgs, the head of commercial marketing at Henri Wintermans, explained the rise in sales of miniature cigars.

'Miniature cigars continue to drive growth in the UK cigar sector, accounting for 49 per cent of sales,' he said. 'They are popular because it is easier for time-poor and venue-restricted smokers to smoke miniatures rather than small cigars, a trend that has been developing in recent years.'

Smoke signals

· From the 1920s, women who were emancipated or elegant were rarely seen without a cigarette. With a casual blowing of smoke, Princess Margaret or Hilda Ogden could indicate their sexuality.

· Refinement was crucial to respectable smoking. Red Tip cigarettes were introduced in the 1930s to protect women from the sin of leaving a lipstick mark on cigarette butts.

· Marlene Dietrich, made smoking sexy when she said, exhaling: 'It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.'

· For help to stop, go to gosmokefree.nhs.uk