A Senator and cancer specialist has urged the Government to introduce a ‘major new tax of at least €3’ on every packet of cigarettes.

The argument is that smokers disproportionately pay more taxes than non-smokers and will cover the cost of cancer care or any other health care that they may need.

Senator and oncologist at St Vincent’s Hospital Professor John Crown spoke to Newstalk Lunchtime this afternoon about the proposed increase.

Senator Crown stated: "When you increase the price of smoking, you do reduce the amount of smoking. Anything we can do that makes fewer people smoke and put themselves at terrible risk for terrible diseases... is to be encouraged."

When presenter Colette Fitzpatrick quizzed Professor Crown about the severe price increase, stating that people with low incomes would be hit harder, he stated: "This is an addiction. It is caused by the tobacco industry deliberately addicting people to their products.

"Five of every six smokers began as an underage child. If children don't take up smoking, there will be a decreasing pool of people to buy the products made by the tobacco company."

Colette then asked, are smokers being punished to which Professor Crown responded: "What punishes smokers is having their legs amputated in their 40s or 50s. What punishes smokers families is losing their mother or their father or their brother or their sister or their spouse.

"It's not the couple of extra euros on the price of the smoking that punishes them, those are the punishments. Those are death sentences."

You can listen to the full interview here: