This is not about smoking per se.

This is more about why I keep “constantly banging on” about the subject.

As you know, I enjoy my pipe.  It is a perfectly legal pastime which has many benefits for me and may have its risks.  I am aware of the latter and chose to ignore them in the same way that bungee jumpers or free-soloing rock climbers ignore them. Virtually every activity has its risks and I am quite happy to take them.

For the last decade or so, I [and the rest of the quarter of the population] have been subjected to a barrage of hate press in the form of twisted truth and outright lies.  I have been vilified and demonised and have effectively been turned into a second class citizen.

Try as I might, I cannot find any conclusive proof that there is any harm at all in secondary smoke.  What I have found, time and time again are reports confirming my belief that the whole second hand smoke thing is a complete fabrication.

So who would go to such lengths and why?

The answer, as always is follow the money.  Virtually all research into secondary smoke is funded by the pharmaceutical industry.  The smoking cessation business is worth billions to them so it is very much in their interests to further the Tobacco Control Industry.  Conspiracy theory?  All I ask is for a simple test – go through any tobacco control website and find me one that promotes “cold turkey” or electronic cigarettes as a means of quitting smoking.  I can guarantee that they will decry any cessation method that doesn’t involve a pharmaceutical product such as the patch, inhalers or gum, despite the fact that the pharmaceutical route is the least successful.

Having failed to persuade smokers to quit, they moved into the “second hand smoke” myth, thereby turning the non-smoking population against smokers.

So the reason I keep banging on about it is because I resent being treated as a second class citizen in my own country, or any other country for that matter.  I resent it because it is all lies.  I resent it because I have to pay outrageous taxes.  I resent it because it affects me every time I want to go for a pint or a coffee.

But why should you care?

Maybe you are a non-smoker or even a smoker who is quite happy with all the laws and regulations that order you about, and you think “the battle is over”?  I would ask you if you are happy that pubs are shutting at a rate of knots?  Are you happy for all the bar staff who are now on the dole queues?  Are you happy for the old folk who are cast out into the cold for a smoke?

Or maybe you don’t care about them either?

Will you care when they start dictating how you drink?  Will you care when they start slamming massive taxes on sugar and salt?  Will you care when your favourite little pleasures fall victim to this endless tidal wave of Nanny Statism?

In the last decade our private lives have come under unprecedented government interference.  They consider it perfectly reasonable to legislate what we can and cannot do “for our own good”.  They are moving rapidly into areas that are none of their concern, deciding what we eat or drink.

Maybe you are happy with that also, but I’m not.

So I “keep banging on about it” in the hope that others may read this and begin to question exactly what is going on in the world.

As Edmond Burke said –

All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.