A complete ban on smoking indoors – and outdoors?
I don’t normally write about smoking, but things have become so unbelievably crazy that I’m going to start. Scottish Labour welcomes:
an initiative by the UK Government to halve the number of people smoking by 2010. The strategy includes a crackdown on cigarette smoking.
A crackdown?! You mean a total ban in all enclosed public places is not already a crackdown?
So, what does this latest crackdown entail?
Quite a lot. Labour made a manifesto ‘promise’ to continue to allow smoking in pubs where food wasn’t served. They lied about that and so people have to stand outside if they want a cigarette. Now the Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, also wants to ban smoking in walkways and near the entrances of buildings. Of course, this will increase the demise of the pub trade as even more people decide to stay at home where they can smoke.
But if you smoke, don’t get too comfy in your own home, because the government wants to ban you from smoking in your house and your car if you have children.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that what naturally follows from this is a total ban on smoking in all cars and all homes at all times and from the ban on smoking outside buildings, to smoking outside, period.
So, no smoking inside and no smoking outside. Burnham really doesn’t want us to burn ‘em. (Sorry.) Of course, tobacco products themselves won’t be illegal because the government needs the vast tax revenue. Maybe they reckon that because smokers will have one or two problems trying to find a place to smoke that is neither inside nor outside, that there will be huge scope for issuing fixed penalty fines and thus smokers, as well as funding the NHS, will also be able to pay off the national debt.
Another idea that has been doing the rounds for a while, presumably to condition us to get used to the idea before it is written into law, is for all cigarettes to be sold in plain packaging.
John Walsh writes today in The Independent,
Lastly, he [Burnham] wants to force tobacco companies to drop brand artwork. “Now that we’ve banned advertising and will soon see an end to attractive displays in shops,” says Mr Birdbrain, sounding smugger than a human really should, “the only remaining method of advertising tobacco is the packaging.” He wants to see only plain fag packets in the future. As if that will make a single smoker think: “Oh no! Twenty cigarettes with no mention of the words ‘Marlboro Lights’ anywhere! I’m so horrified, I will cease this filthy habit immediately.” Andy, seriously, if you’re desperate for a cigarette, issues such as artwork don’t come into your head.
Will that be the end of it? Of course not. The little sadists will soon insist on cigarettes being sold singly rather than in packets, to be taken home in brown paper bags, like mushrooms.
Are the tobacco companies worried?
Imperial Tobacco also responded to the UK government’s new Tobacco Control Strategy, which endorses the plain packaging of tobacco products. The company said that it remains strongly opposed to the strategy and that it believes there is no credible evidence that young people start smoking or adult smokers continue to smoke because of tobacco packaging. According to Imperial Tobacco, making all tobacco products available in the same generic plain packaging will further fuel the growth in illicit trade and undermine the government’s plans to increase investment in tackling smuggling and counterfeiting.
And wouldn’t you know that the government is also trying to ‘crack down’ on smugglers of cheap cigarettes?
Good old New Labour, they’re not just there for the nasty things in life. Well, actually, they are. Here we see more of their planned legislation that is contradictory, won’t work, is draconian and that nobody voted for.
Some people even want smokers to be required to pay for a licence before they are allowed to buy cigarettes. No doubt there are also plans to licence drinkers and fast-food junkies.
Heroin is completely illegal, and yet junkies seem to have no trouble getting supplies. Handguns are illegal and there are shootings every week. They don’t get it at all, this lot.
If they hide the tobacco, why bother with the packaging anyway? Besides,the packaging is like the box your TV came in. You use the contents and throw the box away. The colour and design is meaningless, other than to tell you which brand of TV or tobacco is inside the box.
More tax will increase the incentive for smugglers and the incentive for smokers to buy from them. You don’t need a licence to buy from a smuggler, so that’s another incentive.
They’re going to crack down on smuggling of little packs of tobacco when they can’t stop smuggling of handguns, drugs, and whole families of people. That’s really likely to happen (snort).
None of this will affect the prevalence of smoking. The official figures will plummet but not because smokers are stopping. Because smokers without licences will lie. Smokers buying smuggled tobacco will lie. Smokers growing their own in a little greenhouse will lie. They won’t have any option but to lie. Telling the truth will get them fined.
But then, as long as the official figures go down, nobody in government cares if they are true.
What will also plummet is that ten billion quid of smoking tax per year. That will have to be made up somewhere else and then watch the antismokers squeal. Sure, smokers will pay that extra tax too, but at the moment we’re paying all of it. So smokers will, overall, be better off as a result of Burnham’s lunacy.
Bring it on!
Hi Leg-iron,
If the nasty pictures and tales of doom don’t put people off buying ciggies then no sort of packaging will. Like you wrote on your blog, people will end up buying more imported cigarettes and they won’t be able to read the warnings anyway.
I imagine there are a few reasons why licences are being discussed, like finding out exactly who smokes so they can be denied NHS treatment and be pencilled in for surprise house visits to check you aren’t lighting up in front of anyone under 18.
If you’ve got nothing to hide… How about 20 Marlboro?
If enough people start growing their own tobacco then you know they will be punished as tax-evaders (or worse).
I agree entirely with Leg-Iron. I was a non-smoker for 40 years then I took it up – just to be bloody-minded I suppose. I enjoy it very much – it’s most relaxing – you become focussed on one thing and one thing only. It’s a kind of meditation but without the mumbo-jumbo. The State is despicable – and getting more so by the hour. I’m glad I’m well over half-way through. That, no doubt, is all of a piece with their purpose.
Well, those pictures and warnings… There’s one that says ’smoking damages sperm’ and another that says ’smoking makes you impotent’ which should really make the damaged sperm irrelevant. Besides,if either were true, the chainsmoking chavs would have died out by now for lack of offspring. It seems to have the opposite effect on them.
The ’smoking makes you die’ picture is of an actor posed on a slab with no indication of what they died of. The ’smoking ages your skin’ shows elderly hands with no nicotine stain on any fingers.
The teeth are the best one. Those blackened and gap-ridden teeth we are supposed to believe belong to a smoker show no nicotine stain at all and, oddly, no canines. That’s because they are baby teeth. It’s a picture of sugar-damaged child teeth and nothing to do with smoking at all.
The pictures don’t work because they are all faked. The black lung has long been identified as a coal-miner’s lung (my grandfather died of that) and the list of chemicals can be found in any burning plant material such as logs and in any burning plant-derived material such as coal or oil.
It’s all a sham. Frank Davis has found information that casts doubt on the link between smoking and cancer, which was put in place during a surge in lung cancer cases in 1950’s London. If that was due to smoking it should have happened a hundred years earlier. True, most of the test group smoked – but so did most of the control group who showed no sign of cancer.
The demonisation of smoking and the waving away of non-smoker ailments as ‘passive smoking’ means that other, possibly more dangerous, causes are ignored. Anti-smokers will tell you there’s nothing more dangerous than smoking, because that’s what they’ve been told to believe. Meanwhile, whatever happened in the 1950s to cause that surge in lung cancer will continue unchecked. I’m not saying that smoking cannot cause lung cancer, mind. Any chemical you inhale has the potential to do that. For example. In Aberdeen, a lot of buildings are made of granite which occasionally emits radiocative thorium as a gas. You breathe it in, breathe it out, no problem. If it decays while in your lung, its next existence is as a solid particle, not a gas, so it stays in there and carries on radiating.
What I’m saying is that any other cause is being ignored so that the zealots can attribute every case to smoking. Smoking is not the only cause. It might not even be the main one.
As long as these people continue with their one-issue approach to life and shut down any consideration of other possible causes of cancer, we’ll never know.
ASH are not just a nuisance. They are genuinely dangerous.
Jim,
How did your family and friends react when they first saw you lighting up? Did you tell them in advance, or just shock them by getting down to action?
Stewart,
I don’t remember much reaction. My then girlfriend was very beautiful but also very sarcastic (sigh, women – can’t live with them and can’t live with them) insisting that I was doing it only in an attempt to look macho on the mean streets of Partick. But it did, and does, bring moments of serenity. When you’re having a smoke that’s all you’re doing. As I say, meditation without any nonsense. Peace. One thing this filthy government wishes to deny us all.
Leg-iron,
I agree with all that (didn’t know Aberdeen could give you solid radioactive particles in your lungs. Smoking sounds healthy in comparison!).
And you’re right. When everything is blamed on smoking then the real causes in many cases will be getting ignored.
I have been trying to work out just why the state hates smokers so much, but maybe this is the reason, that they can blame every ill on it and it won’t affect their other friends in big business, like the petrochemical giants and big pharma – both more important.
Quite what they’re going to do in the future when they can no longer blame second-hand smoking is anyone’s guess. As you’ve already reported, they’re now working on tertiary smoking or whatever they are calling it. What next? The dangers of living in the same town as a cigarette?
Unfortunately, the public’s become so dumbed down, I reckon they’d believe it. (Not my regular commentators, of course.)
You and your beautiful women, Jim. You must be one handsome man. Or very rich? The gov’t doesn’t want us to have peace, you’re right. Not in any sense.
‘didn’t know Aberdeen could give you solid radioactive particles in your lungs.’
Ah yes, I thought though it was radon gas that was the problem with granite but that’s a minor query.
It explains a lot about Aberdonians though. Miserable hatchet-faced buggers. It all makes sense – the life they live is a half-life. The unfriendliest taxi drivers in the world and I’ve been to New York City. And London.
‘You must be one handsome man. Or very rich?’
Wrong on both counts Stewart. It’s not like you.
I am a broke manic-depressive paranoid fat bald middle-aged alcoholic of above average intelligence, For some reason some very beautiful and very intelligent women find that combination irresitable.
You know, maybe there is a God.
If that’s the qualifications, then I must be in with a chance too. Just put ‘fat, recovering alcoholic with a few original features, such as several teeth and clumps of hair’!
Stewart,
Yes indeed. But ‘practising alcoholic’ is better – gives them a challenge – when did you last get involved with a woman who didn’t think she could ‘change you’?
Add – ‘Own teeth – made in Birmingham but paid for’
And then, yes, – say goodbye to that forced celibacy. You’ll be fighting them off.
Believe me Jim, they already have a challenge as things stand.
‘Believe me Jim, they already have a challenge as things stand.’
Well, I didn’t want to say…
Well well, Stewart – you do pick and choose your causes. You’re the first to stress why there should be a prohibition when it comes to sexual activity that apparently spreads disease; yet when the government announces plans to clamp down on a habit that our bodies are clearly not capable of accommodating and that really does cause disease and costs the NHS billions, you’re the new John Stuart Mill!
Adrian,
Tax on tobacco actually funds the NHS.
The difference is that smokers are not forcing anyone to accept their behaviour, while homosexuals are.
ON the contrary, I am forced to breathe in the smoke of others. Or smell it. Even at bus stops for instance. No one is forced to have sex or kiss anyone they don’t like.
No one is forced to have sex or kiss anyone they don’t like.
Really?
It’s actually religious communities where forced sex is mandated – not just in obvious places like Saudi Arabia, Iran and so on, but look at Phylis Schlafly (a key figure in the American Christian Right) – or that fool from Christian Voice, who both say there’s no such thing as rape inside marriage.
AdrianT: “really does cause disease and costs the NHS billions”
This is very easily provable as incorrect and you were pulled up on it. Care to retract?
As for being ‘forced’ to breathe in smoke from others at bus stops. Can you point to evidence that it physically harms you (I’ll give you a clue, the proof doesn’t exist and never will)? If not, then it’s just you wanting legislation which suits you on purely selfish grounds.
I don’t like sanctimonious health freaks. As I don’t like them, can I have them banned too?
Hi Dick,
Leg-iron has just done that.