The Lancet UK medical journal today printed an editorial entitled “How do you sleep at night, Mr Blair?”, to which I’m sure his reply could be “Not too bad, thanks”. Contained in this editorial was a call for the government to make tobacco ILLEGAL in the United Kingdom. It pointed to the unprecedented attack by the medical establishment on government health policy and its failure to introduce legislation which would ban smoking in public places. That is understandable, considering that parts of the USA, Canada, Thailand and parts of Australia have done so with a lot of success. But the suggestion to make smoking illegal is either a result of too many years stuck in a clinical bubble, or these good PHDs themselves have become the victims of some mental medical condition. The idea is clearly absurd. What are they on?

I do not smoke. I have never smoked - I consider it to be a bit of a weird habit, filling your lungs repeatedly with the fumes of a burning plant. I consider it to be rather unhealthy, and the smell of smoke revolts me. In fact, come to think of it, it’s just about one of the worst habits someone can have, in my opinion. But BAN it? I ask you: by WHAT authority do you say that we should put the law, with full force of physical coercion and imprisonment, behind a policy to tell someone else what to do with their own body?

These people are clearly not too smart in areas unrelated to medicine. Or this area at least. You see, a smart-thinking individual would realise that it is not UP to them. It also is not up to the government. No-one need dare tell my grandpa that he will be restrained, arrested, fined (made to pay them money or else) or imprisoned (held against the will) for wanting to suck on a fricking pipe. Do you not SEE what a blatant breach of basic human rights that is? We hear a lot about human rights from the Left, but somehow they always seem to have a memory lapse about some of the most fundamental ones: the rights of the human to the fruits of their own labour; the rights of the human to freedom from coercion on issues regarding their own health, their own eduction, their own children, their own preferred method of transport, etc.

The Lancet editorial is right when it says that “80% of people in the UK are non-smokers, and have the right to freedom from exposure to proven carcinogens”. I agree, actually. In public places I believe that a ban on smoking IS libertarian, as to allow it directly infringes on the freedom passers-by, like me, have to breathe reasonably clean air. But what anyone does within private property is NOT a government affair - it is a PRIVATE affair. That includes workplaces (95% of which do not allow smoking by private choice), restaurants (more of which are voluntarily making a similar call without government interference or coercion), bars, clubs, shopping malls and homes. The Lancet today suggests that banning smoking in public places is “missing the point”.

No; the LANCET is missing the point.

The point is NOT a decision based on what may be moral, or what may be (practically) a better way of reducing the number of smokers, or what may be healthy or good for the lungs. The point is: ANY decision which crosses the line from protecting the rights of the individual (which both banning smoking in public places AND allowing smoking in private places would fulfil) to engineering society to ‘collective’ standards of morality which ignore basic human rights to freedom, is a line that NO responsible government should be prepared to cross.

Now stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it.

(Feel free to email me at john-wright@ntlworld.com on this or any other posts.)