Graphic pictures of throat cancer and rotting teeth are to appear on cigarette packets from Wednesday to illustrate the health risks of smoking.

Among the other images smokers will see are rotting lungs, a corpse in a morgue and a body cut open during surgery.

The photos will appear on the back of packets accompanied by a written health warning.

The images replace the previous warnings introduced in January 2003, although the messages "Smoking kills" and "Smoking seriously harms you and others around you" will continue to appear on the front of packets.

New figures showed written warnings had motivated more than 90,000 smokers to call the NHS Smoking Helpline, the Department of Health said.

However, smoking is still the biggest killer in England where it causes the premature death of more than 87,000 people each year.

The photos are expected to be more effective than text, and research suggested that warnings should be changed periodically to maintain their effectiveness, the DoH said.

The smokers' lobby group Forest criticised the new warnings as "unnecessarily intrusive" and "gratuitously offensive".

Forest director Simon Clark said: "We support measures that educate people about the health risks of smoking, but these pictures are designed not just to educate but to shock and coerce people to give up a legal product.

"They are unnecessarily intrusive, gratuitously offensive, and yet another example of smokers being singled out for special attention."

the kids will start smoking just to collect a full set of the pictures.