My Grandad died in 1966 from lung cancer and other associated illnesses (I don't know what they were) at the age of 58. He smoked 60 Senior Service a day.
Despite that I myself smoked for 19 years, at least 20 B&H a day, and managed to give up on New Year's Eve, 1999, so just over 10 years off it now.
What I felt then and what I feel now is that people should have the right to smoke if they wish without nanny state laws making them modern lepers. Through the outrageous taxes on tobacco the contribution smokers make to our Exchequer is enormous, yet they are ostracised, made to feel leeches on the NHS, outlawed in pubs, cafés, restaurants and on public transport and generally as though they are the scum of society. This has to stop. Smokers keep pubs and restaurants open, and it should be for the individual landlord or owner to opt in or opt out of no-smoking laws, not for the control freaks in Westminster to decide that there shall be no smoking anywhere, ever.
Why can there be no such thing as a smoking carriage on a train any more? They are compartmentalised which keeps the smell and the smoke within a finite boundary. Why can you not smoke on an aeroplane any more? The air in a modern jet is changed every 12 minutes, and the smoking section was always at the back, out of the way of those who found it offensive. NHS Hospitals now ban smoking from not only the building itself, but also the grounds. Why?
Smokers are the victims of modern day witch hunts; who will the smoking Nazis turn on when they get their way and the whole thing is outlawed completely? I rather hope they will turn their sights on the banking industry, who have done far more damage to the British economy than an army of chain smokers could ever hope to do.
Someday in the not too distant future, when smoking has been viped off ze face of ze planet, when taxation on beer and wine has eradicated the pub trade completely, when budget cuts have reduced our councils and armed forces to history, when parents have been banned from even looking at their own children, and housing developments have taken away the last green field, some smug arse in Whitehall can sit back and think over a job well done.
