A New Sinister Anti-Tobacco Precedent

The Welsh Assembly yesterday breathlessly introduced their Tobacco Control Plan for Wales to the collection of vacant wooden tops in the Senedd.

Nanny Beeb has all the usual details of hysterical over-reaction, all designed to meet the 'vision' of "a smoke-free society for Wales, in which the harm from tobacco is eradicated". Prohibition is front and centre these days, you see, long gone is any recognition of previous failures along the same lines.

This will be because - like any compulsive liar worth their salt - the problem of civil liberties and choice in a free society has been eradicated entirely by way of self-delusion, as described in the report [page 6].

The argument that people have a right to smoke and that efforts to reduce smoking prevalence infringes on their civil liberties, ignores the fact that two thirds of smokers in the UK start smoking before they turn 18. Creating a product that makes children and teenagers addicted and then arguing that it is their free choice to be addicted is an argument to be rejected outright.

D'you see? It's impossible to exercise free choice up to the time you're 17 years and 364 days old. Only after that arbitrary government-mandated age does the choice fairy come and sprinkle the magic dust on you. And smoking, of course, isn't something that anyone does because they enjoy it - even after turning 18. It's merely an addiction, and one which you must accept that the state is entitled to beat out of you with a very large pointy stick, if necessary.

Incredible, isn't it, that before you're 18 you aren't capable of exercising free choice ... and after you're 18, your free choice is to be 'rejected outright' because other people are under 18.

This is logic which would make even medieval witch-hunters stand and applaud in admiration if they were able. They were amateurs compared to these Taffs.

We're well acquainted with the headline-grabbers included in the report, all of which will have little or no effect on smoking prevalence while simultaneously making everyone's lives that little bit more miserable, and have their basis in all manner of selective stats (I might expand on that tomorrow, as it happens).

However, there's one disturbing proposal which should set alarm bells ringing for every business which manufactures any product disapproved of by government [page 13].

Other strategies such as the establishment of an independent regulatory agency and the introduction of price cap regulation, where a cap is placed on the pre-tax cigarette manufacturers price but not on the retail price that consumers face, may have potential in a UK setting and should be explored.

The Welsh Government will consider alternative strategies for tobacco control such as an independent regulatory agency and price cap regulation for discussion with the UK
Government (Action 1.7).

This would seem to read as a move by the Assembly to dictate a maximum price to private businesses, over which they aren't legally allowed to sell their product.

Not for the benefit of the end purchaser, of course. Don't be silly. They're happy to ramp up the price with extortionate taxation until you can't afford it anymore. No, this is a plan to tell tobacco companies that they are no longer allowed, by law, to decide what price they choose to sell their wares at.

A national maximum selling price decided by the state, and a complete destruction of the economic mechanism between producer and consumer. Only the state is allowed to profit from increased prices, while the manufacturer must have their profit levels squeezed into oblivion by out of control obsessives.

Oh, they'll claim that tobacco is a unique case but can you really believe that? You don't think, do you, that they might just think it has worked so well that BP's profits must be destroyed for the good of Gaia (and to mask tax hikes, which is the very point); fast food prices should be kept stable to allow state taxation to be applied without fuss; or alcohol prices need to be pegged so that minimum price regulation doesn't benefit the drinks industry?

Course not. Tobacco control innovations have never - and I mean, never - migrated into other areas of righteous policy, now have they?

There's only one conclusion to be drawn from such astonishingly draconian ideas. That politicians, blinded by incessant lobbying, have gone stark staring nuts! Dictating selling prices to private businesses rivals Soviet methods at their most excessive, yet not one of these hideous professional politicians bats an eyelid. In fact, they dismiss all thought of objection as irrelevant.

Those governing us are rotten to the very core, and are actively dismantling the fabric of the world we live in, just so we can be forced to live how they tell us to.

Optional self-sacrifice is fast morphing into state-enforced compliance in a way that threatens to turn the free market on its head, with our supposed servants - paid with money stolen from each and every one on us - ripping apart long successful methods of human interaction in favour of hare-brained preening and egotism.

And not one media outlet even mentioned it.

Smirnoff, McDonald's, Saxa, Cadbury's, Guinness, Walkers, Texaco, hell, even British Airways ... your boys face a potential future of taking one hell of a beating if this is ever allowed to become a valid state tool.

Scary times.