It was always inevitable that the whole Public Health edifice, spearheaded by the anti-smoking movement, would overstep its boundaries.  Every organisation down through history, once it’s been given the go-ahead by a suitably compliant or sympathetic Government does it.  Look at what a monster the trade union movement became under the auspices of a sympathetic Labour Government.  Look at what that did to that Government, and look at what the subsequent less-than-sympathetic Tories did to curb their excesses.  We’ve now got a trade union movement which is about as much use to the average worker as a chocolate fireguard.  Tough-sounding fighting talk and the odd one-day strike or two really doesn’t make much long-term difference to the average worker and probably has much to do with the generally stagnant wages that people are on, despite the Governments boasting about an “improving” economy.  Improving for whom, I wonder?

Smokers have been warning about Public Health’s inability to recognise its own boundaries and its inability to stop “just at smoking” for ages.  Maybe you didn’t realise quite how much you were being lied to (and about) whilst you were still smoking, MK, but many, many smokers did, and have been saying it for years.  The term “slippery slope” – consistently refuted by those seemingly hellbent on increasing the impetus down it – was used within the smoking community way before the smoking ban was even implemented.  I guess the bottom line is that people believed all the promises that “tobacco is the only substance which …” and have continued to believe it right up until now, when that the same scrutiny, and almost identical lies, are being applied to them and to their own personal pleasures. 

I just wish that people would make the connection, because a lot (unlike yourself, I’m pleased to read), don’t seem to.  They still argue that “there’s no such thing as passive [name your vice],” thus completely missing the point that no scientific study in the world has ever proved that there’s actually any such thing as “passive smoking!”  The whole thing is a huge con and a big-time psychological trick designed to inspire people to self-righteous indignation based on a made-up threat to their own health.  If people would just swallow their pride, admit that they’ve been duped, and then look carefully at the history of the whole anti-smoking movement from its early days right up to now, they’d get themselves a really good insight into what lies in store for them – and thus how best to fight it.  But to do that, they’ve got to admit that they’ve been wrong about smoking all these years (otherwise, the accusation of hypocrisy and/or the health equivalent of NIMBY-ism can be very effectively – indeed accurately – used to counteract any challenge to proposed restrictions).  And where would their outlet for feeling morally superior be then?