WHY IM BLOODY FURIOUS
This what it comes down to. Firstly, Im bloody furious that I, a responsible adult, am forbidden to have a smoke with a social drink - anywhere in the country. What makes me more furious, though, is that the National Health Service is in disarray, with doctors and nurses being laid off, hospitals closing, and people waiting months for important surgeries; and yet they spend millions of pounds of taxpayers money (my money!) on slick TV commercials, with Spielberg-esque special effects of sinister tendrils of secondhand smoke enveloping innocent victims, to spread fear and intolerance and to depict smokers like me - with no good proof - as murderers.
Im bloody furious that the USA fails to address major issues of terrorism, poverty, violent crime or environmental disaster, but spends well over a billion dollars a year on dishonest anti-smoking propaganda.
Im bloody furious that AIDS, typhoid and dysentery are rampant in the developing world, and that more than 2 million children a year die simply from lack of access to clean water; yet the World Health Organisation spends millions trying to bully the comfortable citizens of prosperous countries out of their pleasures, when those citizens will live long and generally healthy lives anyway.
Im bloody furious at the self-righteousness which accompanies the current anti-smoking climate when it is, is to a large extent, a political and economic phenomenon. The unprecedented success of the anti-smoking movement over the last 7-8 years corresponds directly to unprecedented infusions of cash from the Master Settlement Agreement and the WHOs pact with Big Pharma (in addition, of course, to punitive taxation and other less tangible forces such as political correctness). Quite simply, the tobacco industry has been outmatched by a rich and powerful anti-smoking industry, whose tactics are about as righteous as those of the street fighter who, having knocked his enemy down, proceeds to give him a damn good kicking.
Every prohibitionist movement is essentially about power and profit, dressed up as health and morality. Any time a human pleasure can be shown to carry some risk, the doors are opened for those who want to tax, sue, regulate, legislate and discriminate. The story of Absinthe, for instance, parallels anti-smoking every step of the way: the same pseudo-science, selective and out of proportion propaganda, fearmongering, stigmatisation of the user, and largely unrecognised vested interests (in that case, the French wine industry).
Finally Im bloody furious that public health is rapidly accumulating powers which totally bypass the democratic process. This can be seen at many levels: Mayor Bloombergs health inspectors have powers to enter and search which exceed those of the police (they have, among other things, raided peoples private offices and fined them for the crime of Being In Possession Of An Ashtray). But it goes right to the top, with the WHO dictating policy to democratically-elected governments. Though it may strike some as a conspiracy theory, all the evidence suggests that health authorities and their pharmaceutical allies are establishing a supra-national nanny state which will increasingly dictate our lifestyles whether we like it or not.
