Very good question, I wonder if the parents who smoke around their children would advocate lowering the age to smoke to 6 months old.

Better still get them to do you a roll up. It is a skill and being able to do a decent spliff while on the move is quite a talent.

As it happens, that's exactly what I used to do when my car had an ashtray and a lighter.

I used to consider my destination, determine that it was maybe a 3 fag journey and roll that many. The ashtray had little ridges in which you could push several cigarettes into for easy retrieval without looking, and the lighter could also be located and used on auto-pilot.

In some countries the cigarette is commonly used as a unit of distance. For me Birmingham is 1 fag, Bristol is 3 and South London is about 7.

Roll-ups have the huge advantage that they generally go out before they set fire to your upholstery or testicles. They also biodegrade completely so don't create mountains of litter if disposed of carelessly.

As long as you don't use the cellulose acetate filters, they hang around for a while.

I was driving once and the cherry fell out of my obviously poor quality cigarette. I was driving quite quickly in traffic along an A road. Other than an emergency stop my best option was a side road less than 200m away, I ducked down, stopped, got out of the car and brushed myself down. I had a perfect cigarette sized hole in my jeans and my boxers. Thankfully no personal damage though.

'I'm from the Green Party, and I think we could (ethically) kill two birds with one stone by banning vehicles'