I listened to a bit of a radio interview the other day on Newstalk.

My pal John Mallon went head to head with a Donal Buggy from the Irish Cancer Society.

Now this nice man Buggy would love to see the price of a pack of fags driven up to €30 a pack.  It’s all for our own good, don’tcha know.  Now most of the time is taken up with said Buggy spouting how eight people a day die in Ireland from smoking and how we are all desperate to follow Australia into the realms of the Nanny State, and the only way to do this is to double or triple the price of smokes.  He wants to “help” us to quit by making tobacco unaffordable, because as we all know, every smoker is ripping his or her hair out every day in their desperate attempts to quit the evil addiction that they hate so much

Now our John hit Buggy with the unwelcome news [for the latter] that a survey commissioned in the UK found that 95% of smokers say they smoke because they enjoy it.  Ah, no, says Buggy – they only say they enjoy it only because they are addicted.  It is, apparently, the nicotine talking.

So let’s look at this statement.

Tobacco is an addiction according to Buggy.  And the best way to cure the addiction is to penalise people financially to force them off the evil weed?  We must punish people for something that is supposed to be out of their control?  Or maybe given enough incentive, people will just stop smoking in which case it’s hardly an addiction?

We have heard statements in the past that Nicotine is as addictive as Heroine.  I presume therefore that addiction treatment places like the Rutland Centre are packed with Nicotine addicts?  Strangely though there is alcohol, gambling, drugs, food and sex [!] on their lists but I see no mention of tobacco?  So would this Buggy be happy forcing alcoholics or drug addicts to quit by forcing them out of the market?  I suppose he would.  Though that didn’t seem to stop the drug addicts?  They wil do anything for a fix.

Now Buggy is apparently a Professor of Anaesthesiology and therefore presumably an empathetic and caring person who wants nothing but the best for his patients, yet here is is demanding that the poorest [and the elderly] be penalised with Draconian taxes for doing something they enjoy and who get great benefit from it?

If anyone wants a listen, then here it is.  Only six minutes long, but enough time to get the measure of a cunt.