The tobacco industry should be dead by now. Billions of dollars in lawsuits, public health campaigns, heavy restrictions on advertising, none have succeed in killing it. Forty million Americans still smoke — 15 per cent of women and about 20 per cent of men. Chances are they’ll die a decade before non-smokers but they keep lighting up.

Around the world, antismoking campaigns have succeeded in stabilising the rise in the number of smokers. In China, sales are falling. In Australia, cigarettes must be sold in drab green packages covered in pictures of tumours, diseased hearts and lungs, and dying smokers. The brand name can only appear in small font on the front. The logic is that “unbranded” cigarettes are less appealing to the young who might otherwise see them as a statement of fashion or rebellion.

Yet, for all this, tobacco companies have proved crafty and resilient. This week John Boehner, the Republican former speaker of the House of Representatives, joined the board of Reynolds American, the makers of Camel and Newport. Mr Boehner is a Camel Ultra-Lights man and his job will be to speak for tobacco in Washington.