Marlboro cigarettes are set to disappear from UK shelves within 10 years, as the company's own boss wants to ban fags.
Tobacco firm Phillip Morris International has sold the brand in Britain for more than a hundred years but now wants customers to swap to vaping.
Chief executive Jacek Olczaky said it is part of the tobacco giant's plans to phase out traditional cigarette smoking.
He told The Mail on Sunday : "I want to allow this company to leave smoking behind.
"I think in the UK, ten years from now, maximum, you can completely solve the problem of smoking."
He said this "absolutely" meant that the firm will stop selling traditional cigarettes in the UK and that the Marlboro brand will vanish.
Mr Olczaky added: "It will disappear. The first choice for consumers is that they should quit smoking.
"But if they don't, the second-best choice is to let them switch to the better alternatives."
The Telegraph reported that Mr Olczaky called on the UK government to outlaw cigarettes by 2030, which is England's target for becoming smoke free.
The global company has already invested in nicotine alternatives - including its flagship IQOS product that heats tobacco instead of burning it.
It reportedly has more than 20million users worldwide.
Smoking is one of the biggest causes of death and illness in the UK, according to the NHS.
It estimates that 78,000 people die in the UK every year from smoking and more are living with smoking-related illnesses.
Smoking can increase the risk of developing more than 50 serious health conditions, including some that are fatal and others causing irreversible long-term damage.
It also causes around 7 out of every 10 cases of lung cancer, according to the NHS.
The government’s Chief Medical Officer, Prof Chris Whitty recently warned smoking will kill more people than Covid.
In a lecture at London’s Gresham College, he said: "Smoking is gradually drifting down over time, but it is still a very major cause of mortality.
"The standard estimate is that it causes over 90,000 deaths every year.
"So this year and last year, it is likely more people will have died of smoking-related disease than Covid."
The UK government has plans for Brits to become "smoke-free" by cutting the prevalence by a third by 2030.
British tobacconist Philip Morris first opened a shop in London in 1846 selling tobacco and rolled cigarettes.
His brother Leopold and widow Margaret continued the business after Phillip died of cancer in 1873. They eventually opened a factory and decided to call the cigarette Marlboro.
In 1902, the company opened a New York subsidiary and the Marlboro mark was registered in 1908.
The cigarettes were not marketed under the 'Marlboro' name until 1923.
In 1924, the brand was launched and sold as "America's luxury cigarette" hotels and resorts.
The Marlboro cigarette was largely marketed to women because the filtered cigarettes were seen as 'ladylike', until the 1950s when scientists published a major study linking smoking to lung cancer.
The company then repositioned Marlboro as a men's cigarette because they were concerned about being seen smoking a filtered cigarette. At the time, filtered cigarettes were considered safer than unfiltered cigarettes.
In a 2006 landmark US court ruling, Phillip Morris USA Inc. and all other cigarette companies were banned from using words to describe their products with words such as "light" that could give the impression they were safer.
