…The anti-smoking zealots with their junk science have claimed another scalp. We watched the Health secretary making entirely unsubstantiated assertions on the television about young people taking up smoking as a consequence of seeing cigarette packs. The hysterical, puritanical temperance movement marches inexorably forward, having the hard of thinking believe its relentless propaganda that a few whiffs of smoke from a burning leaf is so dangerous that mustard gas would appear benign in comparison. Indeed, the dreadful Arnott tells us that there is no safe exposure level to second-hand cigarette smoke. This is observable nonsense to anyone who cares to actually do any observing – or has at the very least studied O-level chemistry.
When I was a child, I was exposed to cigarette smoke every time we visited my grandparents – one of whom lived until she was ninety-three despite being a lifelong smoker. As a teenager I worked my way though college in a busy city pub – in those days that meant a semi-permanent fug of fag smoke. Okay, sure, it was a bit unpleasant the following day having my clothing smelling like a discarded ash tray, but I put them in the wash and that problem was solved. I live with a smoker. So, by now, I should be long dead, yet I am in perfect health.
No safe exposure? Bullshit with knobs on. Equally bullshitty is the assertion being peddled by the anti-smoking nutters that hiding tobacco out of site will, somehow, stop people taking it up. Look, pornography has flourished for pretty much forever, despite much of it being kept under wraps (although the interwebs has changed the dynamics somewhat). The more you make something hidden, the more attractive it becomes – the mystery adding to the spice of something forbidden. It’s human nature. Good god, but the writers of Genesis understood that one back in the bronze age.
Not to mention absolutely no scientific evidence whatsoever to support the bizarre assertions being made. This is about control, nothing more, nothing less – the fear experienced by the puritans that some of us, somewhere might be enjoying ourselves and it must be stopped and stopped now. Pure control by government funded fake charities who then lobby government to impose their warped will on the rest of us. Make no mistake, what happens today for tobacco will be rolled out to other verboten products tomorrow. Already we have seen the pattern used on alcohol, so it will be for fats, Big Macs, salt, fizzy drinks, sugar and pretty much anything that just might give someone pleasure.
Pleasure, we can’t be having that, now, can we? These people are evil, make no mistake about it.
I’d like to think that sanity has has left Government but that assumes there was any there in the first place.