I learned to roll my own cigarettes in jail, because tobacco in a pouch was about 90 per cent cheaper than TMs (tailor-mades).

I was so terrible at it, I spent a couple of my hard-earned jail dollars on a contraption that would roll them for me

That was 1982.

The New Zealand Herald reports that young people are labouring under the false impression roll-your-own cigarettes are healthier than manufactured ones because they are more “natural”, when they could actually be at least as hazardous and more addictive, researchers say.

A study by Smokefree researchers at the University of Otago also found some people would find roll-your-own(RYO) cigarettes less appealing if the rolling papers were a mustard yellow colour.

Otago’s professor of public health, Richard Edwards, published a letter in medical journal BMJ in 2014 saying evidence showed RYO cigarettes “are at least as hazardous as any other type of cigarette” and pointing to animal research suggesting they were more addictive.

“Any notion that loose tobacco is more ‘natural’ is severely undermined by evidence that the concentration of additives is higher in loose tobacco, at about 18 per cent of dry weight, compared with 0.5 per cent for factory made cigarettes,” he wrote in his letter.

“Some of these additives, including sweeteners such as honey, sugar, dextrose, and sorbitol, often at much higher concentrations than in factory-made cigarettes, potentially make the product more acceptable to children. The high concentration of other additives would probably surprise RYO cigarette smokers.”

The researchers at Otago published their findings in the international journal Tobacco Control.