The British Medical Association cuts to the chase. No shilly-shallying about. None of these namby-pamby half-measures or pathetic, milquetoast compromises, no, they have decided to go for the kill and demand another full-blown drug war:
Smoking should be completely banned in the UK, according to a top medical journal.
The Lancet said tens of thousands of lives would be saved by making tobacco an illegal substance and possession of cigarettes a crime.
Might as well really. The political climate is right, the enforcement apparatus is all in place and resistance will not be futile because it will be non-existant. In fact, they are probably kicking themselves for not coming out with this sooner.
Dr James said the government had already shown it was willing to pass similar legislation, such as banning the use of hand held mobile phones while driving.
Once again we see that appeasement does not work. Give the bullies an inch and next they want a mile. These people cannot be placated.
Forest director Simon Clark said the Lancet was “the true voice of the rabid anti-smoking zealot”.
He said smokers should not be treated as criminals, adding: “The health fascists are on the march.
Oh no, Simon, they have been on the march for decades. Now they have taken the citadel.
“What next? Will they urge the government to ban fatty foods and dairy products?”
Yes. There is no reason for them not to.
Question for the Brits – are smokes heavily taxed in the UK?
The US tobacco industry, in a deal with the devil from any perspective, has effectively inoculated itself politically from any ban on cigs, because it has made itself such a rich cash cow for the government via various taxes and “settlement” agreements. A ban on cigarettes would trigger a fiscal crisis and is thus unthinkable, politically. Sure, the health nazis are always given a respectful hearing, and restrictions on smoking in public are always popular with our masters, but an outright ban is a nonstarter.
Cripes, a reduction in smoking has already triggered a minor fiscal crisis in a number of states that had big plans for tobacco tax money that hasn’t shown up. We are nearly to the point where smoking, or at least buying heavily taxed cigarettes, is a civic duty.
Robert,
You have correctly identified the rather perverse saviour of the day: revenue.
Tobacco is not just heavily taxed, it is obscenely heavily taxed. HMG raises about 9.3 billion per annum and they need that money.
So the plaintive whelps of the BMA are likely to be stonewalled actually. However, it does say something about the state of discourse in this country that they are sufficietly emboldened to demand a complete prohibition in the first place.
Some people just have this itch to suck all the joy out of life. I don’t know if it’s apparent to some of these killjoys but life isn’t measured in just years.
It’s measured in pleasure.
Next thing you know those bastards will outlaw prostitution!
My only surprise is it’s taken them this long to come up with this. The logic of Safety Nazism is nothing if not transparent; even a child could follow it through to its logical conclusions.
Given that private cars a) account for most of the combustion engine pollution, b) account for most of the traffic congestion and c) account for a goodly % of the 3500 traffic fatalities per annum, should we start taking bets now on when the calls to have them banned will start?
David, I laughed this news off, though with a slight frisson down my spine. I’m a consultant in the NHS, and while The Lancet is indeed the pre-eminent medical journal, its pronouncements don’t have anything like the same political clout as those of the de facto doctors’ union, the British Medical Association. And even the BMA hasn’t managed to get boxing banned despite a five-year campaign.
My subscription to The Lancet lapsed a few weeks ago, and in the light of this latest madness I’m glad I didn’t renew it. I don’t agree that these people have taken the citadel, as you put it: most of my colleagues in the field of psychiatry are Blairites or further left, yet my brief canvass today revealed that the majority would accept a ban on the weed over their dead bodies.
I saw this on the late news and have been thinking about it since. I don’t think it is a serious call at this time but a covert sales technique. We have seen several calls for bans in “public” places recently that have been given short shrift by the government. Perhaps this call has the intention of getting the debate on bans back up the media and political agendas and to relieve the public that although some parts of the medical priesthood are clamouring for prohibition we will only have to put up with a ban in “public” places.
It was most amusing that on the same news bulletin I saw there was a later item about the “superbug” that is apparently infecting some 350,000 NHS patients each year by mere virtue of needing hospital care.
Hey, why not a ban on smoking to follow up the thundering successes of the bans on drugs and guns? Those have worked out so very well, I’m sure all will agree.
Good point.
With firearms now largely banned the problem lately is that criminals have finally figured out that they can make their own firearms. A moderate investment in a multi-axis CAD/CAM machine along with publicly available blueprints for popular fireams allows just about anyone with a vocational degree to make them.
As for a ban on tobacco? I think that would be funniest thing imaginable. The UK has a long and proud tradition of smuggling stretching back about 2,000+ years. I think it started about 5 minutes after some local potentate thought taxation of imports and luxury goods was a good idea.
I can just see the thousands of pounds of tobacco travelling through the Chunnel.
The new season of South Park has an episode about anti-smoking nazis and the lies they tell, starring Rob Reiner as the head fascist.
They are slowly trying to do the same thing here (the U.S.), but it’s easier in a country like England where there is government to institute such policies. If Gore had been elected, I think the anti-smoking fascists would have been a lot farther a long by now.
But as others have pointed out, tobacco tax revenues are obscenely huge and states need them. The fact that they double dipped by suing these companies after encouraging them to regulkate nicotine (whne they turned around and sued them for) just shows what a vicious cycle government is.
LIEberman is calling for the government to attack food companies. Of course, no one is listening to Senator Palpatine. He’s croaking in the dark.
Bernie Greene is on the right track. This is a strategic gift to the bullies of ASH & Co., if not deliberately engineered by them.
Banning smoking in public places is very much on the agenda, and having a prominent body–any prominent body–call for outright criminalisation, will enable those who want such a ban to present it as a policy of “balance” and compromise.
(As ever, the “balance” to be struck is really a difference to be split without weighting of factors or explicit criteria. And the measure of the difference is from the status quo to the extreme position on the “balancer’s” side of the argument, the possibility of contrary positions at all, never mind a non-linear policy-space, is ignored.)
This is socialised medicine for you. As long as the state has an interest in keeping health costs down, your personal habits are going to be of unhealthy interests to the politicians – especially priggish, intolerant little control freaks like Tony Blair. All behaviour modification presented as for our own good, of course.
Guy Herbert is right: they will present “allowing” people to continue to smoke as a compromise, but they’ll ban smoking in public places.
Ah yes. I am entirely in favour of banning smoking completely. After all, prohibition of other drugs has worked so well.
Small point, The Lancet is not a BMA publication and the BBC news story does not mention the BMA at any point. I would personally be surprised to see the BMA to develop this as a policy.
Personally, I hate smoking, but believe that, so long as risks are not deliberately hidden or downplayed, people have a right to make bad decisions. In other areas, such as Hormone Replacement Therapy, the medical profession argue that people can trade risks for benefits. If a person wishes to trade their health for the short-term enjoyment of a cigarette, then why shouldn’t they? Do we not all have the right to choose a risk?
…Tobacco is not just heavily taxed, it is obscenely heavily taxed. HMG raises about 9.3 billion per annum and they need that money…
An additional tidbit: apparently the cost to the NHS of smoking-related illness is only about 1.6 billion per annum, so the surplus is available to shore up the budget of the most wasteful agency in operation.
A cash cow, indeed; more like the golden [platinum ?] goose.
Tho’ I’m grateful for Verity’s suppport, it isn’t all that clear that suppressing smoking keeps health costs down.
We all die. The smokers who die of lung cancer and coronary heart disease are out of the way pretty quickly and undoubtably paying their way through heavy taxes. It’s the balance of longer term care that racks up the socialised medical cost. If you were worried entirely about costs, and not affected by a presumption in favour of (or indeed, against) personal freedom, the MacDonalds-guzzling pre-diabetics are the ones worth targeting.
True, Guy, but perception is everything.
People *think* the bulk of NHS resources goes on vile smokers. (This factoid camouflages a multitude of failures.) So if we appear to be exercised about smoking and the “cost to the taxpayer”, we propose a ban on smoking. But we allow ourselves to be persuaded not to do that. We “compromise” instead with a ban on smoking in public places – not because this will cut down on perceived greedy use by smokers of the NHS, but because it is part of the socialist agenda anyway. Then we shrug and fret in public about how much smokers “cost the taxpayer” and our inability to do anything about it. Thus we can excuse the performance of the NHS. Like everything emanating from this government, it’s all a big lie and it’s all smoke screens and mirrors.
I don’t think smoking should be completely banned but I do think it should be banned in public places. The way I see it, you can do whatever the hell you want with your body/property/money as long as it doesn’t adversely affect anyone else.
I’m with Paul. Whenever I’m cycling along, having a fag, and I get stuck behind some damn diesel-powered bus belching out fumes… well, time they were taken off the road, isn’t it? I didn’t ask for buses. And I note that my council taxes subsidise the bus industry. If people really want to get somewhere, they’ll walk there, won’t they?
The money is spelled out:
‘It said ordinary people were better equipped to consider the arguments than the government, “perhaps because the UK public does not have to consider directly the £9.3bn per year raised in tax revenue on tobacco”.
In comparison, the £1.5bn cost to the NHS of smoking-related diseases was “paltry”, the Lancet argued.’
Oh dear, those nasty smokers are costing over 1 billion while only paying 9 billion. Let’s stop them, we can always make up the 7 or 8 billions by getting rid of something – maybe NHS.
And although there is no non-anectdotal evidence that second-hand smoke [aka ETS] increases risks, we know that it must because it smells nasty. After, everything that is bad either smells or tastes bad, while nothing that is good does! That’s why we want to ban penicillin, too!
Certainly, the incrementalist road to a total ban runs through bans on smoking in “public” places.
Here in the US, that is the road that is being taken, and it has led to bans on smoking outdoors, bans on smoking in bars, and next up is a ban on smoking in your own home, if you happen to live in an apartment building or in a home with children.
That’s a very interesting point. One way to reduce overall NHS costs is to encourage behavior that will result in the early death of people rather than in long term chronic illnesses.
A little evil yes but workable. So a way would be needed to convince people to engage in activities that seem healthy but will instead result in an early death. Well the surest way of doing this is through cardiac arrest. So the best way is to convince people to engage in activity that will enhance the opportunity for cardiac arrest. Perhaps consuming a lot of extremely fatty foods to clog those arteries. But we don’t want people to exercise, that will defeat the purpose so we’ll have to convince the people that exercise is a good idea, but not completely necessary. Perhaps some sort of high profile diet ….
Like the Atkins Diet?
Hmm. Makes ya’ think don’t it? 🙂
Tens of thousands of lives saved by banning smoking!
Tens of thousands of criminals smuggling and selling now-banned tobacco! Turf wars!
If we include possession and use of tobacco, millions of new criminals!
This policy is Insanely Great. It should be implemented immediately.