Smoking was once the mark of a man, and of the stylish, independent woman. Seduced by Hollywood stars from Dietrich to James Dean, colossal advertising and a highly addictive drug, by the early 1960s the proportion of adult males who smoked hit 60pc.

Back then, smoking was sexy and guilt-free. So guilt-free that one US TV advert boasted: More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette.

But things were never the same after the tobacco industry's campaign against medical science collapsed, and the deadly link between smoking and cancer was sealed. Today, smokers number one third of what they once did, but a hard core remains. Believe it or not, it's only five years since Ireland's refusniks were fuming that Micheál Martin's audacious workplace ban would herald the fall of civilisation.

It didn't. It raised the bar for the rest of the world, and persuaded thousands here to quit the habit. Every little victory counts, but new data this week from the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (RCSI) makes it clear that the problem in some parts of Irish society is far worse than it was 50 years ago. In the 1960s, smoking was still comparatively rare amongst young Irish women, but this week's report shows that 56pc of 18 to 29-year-old females in the lowest social brackets are smokers, while at the top of the social pile, 28pc smoke.

It is a pattern that has been repeated throughout the recorded history of tobacco. Like poisonous mercury, once it has been banned or restricted, it will invariably find another route.

And despite the health risks, some smokers still consider tobacco a prized possession, just as the earliest smokers in the New World did. Early Spanish invaders of South America observed that every native male (it was seemingly a 'Men Only' thing) would carry a personal pouch of tobacco. It could be used as money, and was valued as a medicine to cure earache, toothache, colds, asthma and a range of ills. The natives treated tobacco as a gift from their gods and believed the exhaled smoke could carry their prayers to heaven.

Soon, Europeans got in on the tobacco buzz. In 1607, the first permanent English colony was established in Jamestown, Virginia. Funded by a London company, it was expected to send home gold. There was no gold, but a crop of tobacco was shipped back to England as "brown gold". Here in Ireland, Walter Raleigh is said to have planted Ireland's first potatoes and tobacco on his Cork estate. It has entered legend that the two-time Mayor of Youghal was sitting in his garden one day, surveying his lands, and enjoying a smoke, when a servant threw a pitcher of water over him, thinking he was on fire.

Over the centuries that followed, Church and State around the world condemned smoking, but every ban from Buckingham Palace to Beijing was openly flouted.

However, one leader who had more success than most was Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church. In 1833, God told Smith in a vision that tobacco was sinful, and to this day it's a Mormon Commandment to swear off the stuff.

Another notable anti-smoking success was Adolf Hitler, who felt that any master race worth its salt shouldn't be in thrall to "smoking slavery". As the Nazis prepared to inflict death and destruction on millions, the regime imposed a smoking ban on government offices, the Luftwaffe, many workplaces and hospitals. Their slogan was: "Tobacco is the enemy of world peace." Hitler, a non-smoking vegetarian, was himself held up as the most virtuous of the war leaders, as Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt were all addicted to the filthy habit.

To demonstrate the gravity of the Nazi health warning, a man was executed in 1942 for starting a blaze after lighting up in a designated no-smoking area. In 1944, with the Third Reich on its knees, smoking was banned on all city trams and buses.

But when Germany was defeated, US cigarettes flooded the shattered country. It has been claimed by serious scholars that some troublesome anti-smoking campaigners, still stuck in their old Nazi ways, were assassinated.

Perhaps, but what is beyond doubt is that as part of the Marshall Plan for German reconstruction, the US shipped 93,000 tons of free tobacco to Germany in 1948/49 to help them kick back into the habit.

At the start of the 20th century, with smoking established as a badge of manliness, the industry turned its attention to the planet's next biggest potential market - women. All its early efforts at persuasion flopped until, in the 1920s, the industry called in Edward Bernays, the world's first PR guru.

Bernays' team concluded women didn't smoke because they associated cigarettes with the phallus, the symbol of male power, and so felt smoking was off limits. Their solution was to turn cigarettes into "torches of freedom", marketing them to women as tools of empowerment. Assembling a group of young women under the title The Torches Of Liberty Contingent, Bernays arranged for them to light up in unison at New York's Easter Parade.

The photos made front-page news around the world and the floodgates opened. Manly Marlboro was rebranded as a "Mild As May" women's cigarette, with the copyline: Women quickly develop discerning taste. That is why Marlboros now ride in so many limousines, attend so many bridge parties, and repose in so many handbags. Lucky Strike was also given a make-over and redirected at women, who were urged to: "Reach for a Lucky Strike instead of a sweet."