The Precedent That Keeps On Taking Liberties

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about tobacco control being discussed at an Irish obesity conference.

THE SMOKING ban has not had any appreciable effect on the number of smokers in Ireland, the chief medical officer at the Department of Health has said.

At a forum on obesity yesterday, Dr Tony Holohan said ...

Obesity? Why are you talking about the smoking ban at an obesity forum then, Tony?

He also said there was a need to look at the inter-relationship between different lifestyle factors, including tobacco use, alcohol consumption and obesity, and their effects on health.

“People who smoke just don’t smoke, they are also people who are overweight and they are also people who are high consumers of alcohol and we need to understand the interaction of those,” Dr Holohan said.

Well, how about this? In Canada yesterday, we see obesity being discussed at a tobacco control conference!

"Reductions in smoking are largely the result of specific policy interventions, with price increases through tobacco taxation being most effective," continued [Dr. David Hammond, associate professor at the University of Waterloo School of Public Health and Health Systems]. "Along with changes in where you can smoke, how tobacco companies can market products, and how smoking risk is communicated to the consumer, these interventions have helped reduce smoking prevalence in Canada from 50 per cent in 1960's to 17 per cent in 2010."

Hammond believes that similar policy interventions could lead to a major change in obesity rates among Canadians, and he is not alone in this opinion. Tobacco control professionals from across Canada are gathering to share information and lessons learned with delegates working on obesity prevention.

Through the exchange of knowledge, particularly what worked and did not work for tobacco control, the goal of reducing obesity rates in Canada through policy intervention can get a head start.

That bashing of smokers by those who don't personally partake doesn't seem so wise now, does it? It was only supposed to be those malodorous nicotine addicts in the cross hair, after all. Unlike normal people who enjoy other vices, smokers were a unique problem ... weren't they?

Oh how those who enjoy other vices laughed when we warned them that they would be next, and that their collaboration would come back and bite them on their lardy behinds; or the inebriates on their drooping todger; and that the anti-tobacco precedent would be employed to do so.

Suck it up, wobble-bottomed smokerphobes. Eat reality along with your Cripple Cock, CAMRA. The beast you helped spawn is sharing tips and mass producing finger-waggers tailored specifically for the task of denormalising YOU!

One day, you'll work out that perhaps you should have stood up for smokers - thereby also protecting yourselves for the future - while you had the chance. Your intolerant prejudices opened the floodgates, and now 'public health' hectors are swarming all over the less-than-healthy pleasure that you enjoy.

We did warn the irresponsible, short-sighted idiots. Sadly, they didn't listen, and many will fail to see the connection even when professional scaremongers are crawling all over newly denormalised free choices, conjuring up images of dead children and demanding unconditional abstinence.

The new puritan alliance is up and running now, and the baton they are carrying was supplied by anyone who has ever blithely approved of bans, restrictions, or any other state-led sanctions against substances or practices which they don't personally like.

Divide et impera, I think they call it.

All that's left now is to watch for respective appeasers in each targeted group to come out and give a little ground in the hope of being left alone (oh look, here they are already) but - as smokers are well aware - this is simply not on the wider agenda for prohibitionists. The best example of this comes from ASH's Beyond Smoking Kills report which came after, remember, the implementation of a smoking ban many myopic smokers thought was worth supporting in order to shut them up.

Some smokers may feel that enough has been done to restrict their behaviour and that they should be left alone to enjoy the choices they freely make. Yet this misses the point.

Indeed it does. The 'point' is that these evil nags will never stop.

They were never going to stop once smoking had been denormalised, they were inevitably going to extend their appalling anti-social nature to the users of other unapproved products. And they will never be satisfied with any achievement, however radical or ground-breaking it may be. There will always, but always, be the 'next logical step' towards ultimate prohibition.

Bansturbators aren't even hiding the fact that they're ganging up, globally, anymore. Any chance some of the blinkered in other camps might wake up and do likewise in opposition sometime soon?

Nah, didn't think so.