Strike a light!

So the latest from the British nanny state is the proposal for a total ban of smoking in all indoor public places. Apparently, the current system of having separate smoking and non-smoking areas or advertising whether a particular establishment has a permit or prohibition is no longer good enough. We'll all have to trot outside for our nicotine fix. Why shouldn't I be allowed to go to a closed room with other consenting adults so that we can damage our health?

Contrary to the apparent belief of the Smoke Gestapo, smokers do not as a rule light up maliciously, specifically to annoy any nearby non-smokers. Neither do they gang up in doorways with the sole purpose of breathing second-hand smoke at everyone entering or leaving the building.

Those non-smokers who are currently crowing about this wonderful ban will doubtless be more than happy when their tax bill increases to cover the deficit in funds due to the absence of tobacco revenue. In Britain, smokers contribute £9.3 billion to the State annually. The cost of treatment of smoking-related illness is around £1.5 billion. It isn't rocket science to realize that the balance is £7.8 billion. In other words, with the NHS neither treating smokers nor receiving any funds from them, making up the shortfall would have to come out of everyone's pocket: Around £5 a week from each of Britain's 30 million or so taxpayers.

If the British Government is actually serious about controlling tobacco consumption (which I doubt), perhaps laws to criminalise it should be introduced? Use, possession, trading and import of tobacco would become an offence. But that would involve an enormous loss in excise revenue wouldn't it? The British National Health Service annual budget in 2002-03 was around £65 billion. Most of this money comes from direct taxation, with tobacco revenue contributing to the remaining 10%. Even assuming that the remaining 10% is entirely tobacco related, that's smokers donating £6.5 billion a year, leaving £2.8 billion for Her Majesty's Government to spend elsewhere. Deduct £1.5 billion for treatment of lung cancer, emphysema and other smoke-related morbidities, and that still leaves £4 billion that the NHS wouldn't have if tobacco didn't exist.

What is next on the list of things to ban? Alcohol perhaps, or fatty food? Maybe those carcinogenic barbecues should be made illegal, along with all dairy products? While we're about it, isn't red meat supposedly too dangerous for the public to eat?

Incidentally, the new healthy lifestyle to be imposed upon us by law will inevitably result in huge numbers of healthy senior citizens, all gleefully drawing their pensions well into their nineties and beyond. Paid for by whom, exactly? Presumably the same people who who also pay Customs and Excise to keep tobacco out of the Sceptred Isle.

And my own smoking habit? I enjoy the occasional cigar and the even more occasional pipe. I also have a sheesha (nargileh, hubble-bubble) once in a while. Cigarettes? No thanks.