The legislation means that from Friday all large shops and supermarkets in England must hide cigarettes and tobacco products from public view.
"It's also about supporting smokers who want to give up," Lansley told BBC Breakfast. "There's more than a third of smokers who say they want to stop. Each year we have nearly 800,000 smokers who try to quit, 50% succeed. We want to continue to increase that proportion, help more people to stop."
The Department of Health said the move was in response to evidence that cigarette displays in shops can encourage young people to take up the habit.
According to its figures, more than 300,000 children aged under 16 try smoking each year and 5% of children aged 11 to 15 are regular smokers. About 39% of smokers say they were smoking regularly before the age of 16.
Lansley dismissed the suggestion that smoking could become more attractive to young people if it was kept hidden and insisted the key issue was about "shifting the culture".
"The culture is about moving to a place where tobacco and smoking isn't part of normal life: people don't encounter it normally, they don't see it in their big supermarkets, they don't see people smoking in public places, they don't see tobacco vending machines.
"We are going to continue to try to act against smoking for the simple reason that most smokers want to quit and it is the biggest avoidable cause of early mortality."
Jean King, of Cancer Research UK, told the programme: "We want everything we can possibly do to make cigarettes unavailable and inaccessible and something that children don't see as a normal product."
She said there was "no positive use" for tobacco and no known safe level of use, adding: "We need to do everything we can to prevent young people getting hold of cigarettes."
The health minister, Anne Milton, said: "We cannot ignore the fact that young people are recruited into smoking by colourful, eye-catching, cigarette displays.
"Most adult smokers started smoking as teenagers and we need to stop this trend. Banning displays of cigarettes and tobacco will help young people resist the pressure to start smoking and help the thousands of adults in England who are currently trying to quit."
All tobacco products must be kept out of sight except when staff are serving customers or carrying out other day-to-day tasks, such as restocking. Those found not complying with the law could be fined up to £5,000 or face imprisonment.
The ban on displays will roll out to smaller shops and businesses in three years' time.
I spent the afternoon wandering around the square mile in the City of London yesterday and was thinking that the reverse is true - smoking is certainly a part of life for many people in many stratas of society. Which is odd on many levels.
Objectively I think most people would agree he is right (on health, financial etc grounds, smoking doesn't seem to be a very good lifestyle choice) - and yet he is clearly wrong in that many many people still have smoking as a integral part of life. I'm not sure that a Government Minister declaring that it suddenly is not a part of life makes it so.
They should have taken this measure years ago. I'm in my first year of quitting. I feel great for stopping and have overcome the cravings now. However, everytime I go into a store that sells cigarettes I feel the enticement to smoke. They're not displayed purposelessly. But why not package all recreational drugs in plain packaging with a health warning and sell them at the chemists ?
"We no longer see smoking as part of life". Smoking is undesirable & I stopped it way back, but it is part of the way that millions of people live. Saying or wishing that something were so, doesn't make it so - if it did, this coalition wouldn't be in charge any more.
I wonder where the balance of costs lie between the tax taken from alcohol and tobacco sales and the health costs associated with lung disorders etc. An uneducated person like me would think the costs of the healthcare might be higher.
In 50 years we have advanced towards a position in which smoking is a minority habit. These days you can tell smokers -- and the houses -- by the (formerly omnipresent) smell. For the moment people still have the choice to indulge in this nasty, expensive and unpleasant habit, but so far as I am concerned the less they are encouraged to do so the better.
Advertising does not cause addiction. There are smarter men than Lansley (like Dr Gabor Mate) who understand that addictive behaviour is the result of stress. People having problems giving up won't suddenly do it because there are less ads around.
For once I'm going to agree with a Tory minister. I, most of my friends - even my mother - have stopped smoking since the ban and we're all happy we did, we all found it easy and we all wish we'd done it years ago. None of us would say we gave up because of the ban, but we quickly got used to not smoking in pubs etc., we all drifted into a policy of no smoking in our houses and we all decided we'd had enough within 5 years of the ban being implemented - so it probably did have the desired effect. All good.
Smoking and drinking does indeed cut the years you live. But only the sh1t ones.
Well a friend of mine (heavy smoker) died of heart disease three years ago at te age of 63. I'm sure she thought the years ahead looked pretty good when she went to bed that night. Unfortunately, she didn't wake up so she'll never know.
Smoking isn't "a part of life"? I took a quick look at the DoH statistics. 24-25% of adults 18-45, are regular smokers. More than a third of the population lives with at least one smoker. 69% of the population are related to, or friends with, regular smokers. I suspect, from anecdotal observation of people in my local and in the streets, that actual regular and/or casual smoking rates are significantly higher than the sanitised picture the (on another planet) Lansley seeks to give us. Approve or disapprove of smoking, like or dislike it, this messianic, obsessive anti-smoker campaign has to stop somewhere. Jean King's remarks make clear where the health fascists wish that to be - "unavailable and inaccessible" - i.e. prohibition or illegal full stop. Why, oh why, can these people not leave us to make our own, informed decisions and lifestyle choices? Why is their need to control, harangue, coerce, so overwhelmingly strong?
This strategy doesn't harm the tobacco industry, they make up for 'lost' smokers by flogging them nicotine replacements. No smoker I've spoken to about this, including myself, started because we were drawn by colourful displays, your first fag was brand irrelevant. This is grandstanding with a side of civil rights erosion. Labour's all encomposing smoking ban has ruined many British pubs and the Tory-Libdem follow up will probably have a similar effect - small number of people swapping fags for patches, other people out of work and the 25% of the adult population who choose to smoke even more pissed off. If there was a shread of sincerity in this nannying bullcrap they'd ban tobacco altogether but the NHS can't afford to lose the revenue. Lansley is not stupid enough to believe that teenagers will not start smoking because of this idiotic scheme but he thinks voters are stupid enough to believe it a good thing, perhaps he's right, he did get voted in after all.
Yet another 'victory' for the mealy mouthed anti smoking Taliban to celebrate. Yes yes yes no one wants kids to take up smoking so here is the challenge to these government wasters : Put as much if not more effort into giving the young and future generations a society worth living in with regard to employment prospects and feeling they are 'relevent' in modern Britain. Real hope will dwindle any youngsters desire to engage in ANY negative activities ! Will you governmental idiots get a grip on reality please !!!!
Eh excuse me what is this big brother twat on about. This is disgusting brain washing crap and a real cr?ackdown on the individual rights and freedoms of people. I dont smoke myself but i respect the rights of others to smoke if they want to in private. What will be next alcohol, tea, coffee
Well, I wonder how the alcoholic feels whenever they pop into a shop for a packet of gum. Or perhaps the over weight person passing by a bakery. Perhaps we should ban it all! Highly irresponsible of shops to put the biscuits at the forefront of the shop at a discount and what about all those chocolate bars, 2 for a £. Silly, maybe, but there are many things in life that are bad for us, such as drinking too much, eating too much, smoking too much, sunning too much, name it and if it is too much, it isn't good for you. There is nothing sillier than Lansley acting as if he is saving the 'health' of the country by hiding everything that may harm behind closed doors or big brown wrappers. Funny how the kids can still access the porn, the booze, the fags.... human behaviour in the 21st century is a bitch for the political idiots.