Freedom?

SO – the new Labour Government’s most pressing concern is stopping a chap having a smoke with their pint in the pub garden?

Interesting. At a time when the country is beset with problems, socially, economically, politically, racially – this is what you choose as one of your spearhead battle plans. Really?

This is an interesting snapshot of the mentality of the nascent government – and where we currently stand as a nation. We won’t get into tobacco and health here – we are all very clear on that. Cigarettes (the commodity that this cumbersome proposed piece of legislation is squarely aimed at) are bad for you. You won’t find us arguing. But to claim that passive smoking is a danger outdoors is simply a lie. Passive smoking, scientifically, becomes an issue in enclosed spaces over long periods of time. The guy on the next table having a cigarette that occasionally blows in your direction? Do me a favour.

Quite apart from us cigar lovers helplessly gnashing our teeth at once again being lumped in with the fag brigade, there is a level of dishonesty here in this government policy which is hard to ignore.

How can you take billions in tax revenue with one hand and deliver a condemning public message with the other? If tobacco is that bad, why not just ban it? We may not agree with that premise, coming, as we do, from a niche corner of the tobacco market, one that is very different indeed from all the others, but at least we could accept that if this was the government’s stance, they were acting honestly in accordance with it.

But this is not what they are doing.

They are having their cake and eating it. They are pretending that outdoor smoking is dangerous to others when it isn’t and using that excuse to bring in swingeing bans. This has potential long-term ramifications for further freedoms in our country. We are supposedly a free nation, able to make our own informed choices about how we live our lives, within a rigorously tested legal framework. Bans like those proposed change that dynamic. How is it reasonable that alcohol, for example, remains happily free from encumbrance other than a ‘Drink Responsibly’ sticker in tiny font on the back of a bottle? The misuse of alcohol, we know, is responsible for huge public harm; socially, familially, fiscally, medically, psychologically. We, as sensible adults, are also aware that there is a world of difference between a glass or two of wine over a nice meal with friends and downing eight pints before a punch up in the high street after closing.

It is this nuance we are being denied, as if we were incapable of making a sensible decision, making our own minds up about how we want to act, behave, live.

That is the very definition of the Nanny State. And it is a worrying start to a new regime which has a massive backlog of pressing cultural issues to tackle. Dark clouds appear to be gathering.