Finally the anti-smoking zealots have come out into the open to spill their poisonous ideology in its pure form. Not content with “chipping away” at peoples free choices, they are now openly calling for an outright ban – at least our Celtic cousins in the socialist paradise west of the Severn are.
A cancer charity has called for the introduction of an outright smoking ban in Wales.
Cardiff-based Tenovus said that after chipping away at smoking in various public places it was time “to think about the bigger question”.
The call comes on the day that smoking is banned within the grounds of most Welsh hospitals.
Prohibition has worked so well when it has been tried before. The USA managed to enrich Al Capone during the twenties and thirties with their failed alcohol prohibition – not to mention the damage caused by home distilled hooch. And then there’s that war on drugs we are winning so well.
Quite apart from all of this, quite part from it being a failed and discredited idea, and, quite apart from it being a grotesque invasion of the right of people to put into their bodies whatever they choose, still we have insane fuckwits calling for an outright ban on smoking. We always felt that these prohibitionists are somewhat unhinged. Now we have clear evidence. After all, trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is surely the best evidence of insanity.
But Richard Pugh, community development manager for Tenovus, has called for a much more radical approach – a total ban on smoking.
There’s nothing radical bout it. Indeed, it is a tired, well worn path that has been tried and has failed many times already with other substances. People will still smoke and there will be a healthy black market. All those folk currently peddling heroin and cocaine will simply move into the tobacco trade. Richard Pugh is a moron. Worse, he is a moron who thinks that what other people do is any of his business when it most certainly is not.
Derriford Hospital Plymouth
http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/Shelter-removed-hospital-site-goes-smoke-free/story-15514927-detail/story.html
“The ban will extend right to the premises edge, meaning smokers cannot light up even outside the main hospital doors.”
And if you smoke we’ll stamp our feet and stick NRT patches all over you!!!!!!
Well, it’ll do wonders for the tourist trade in Wales…
Especially when they do the same with alcohol. The Welsh have a long history of prohibitionism, of course.
Much as I loathe smoking, this is really not on.
You are quite correct.
What really gets to me is that these idiots refuse, point-blank to learn that this sort of thing just DOES NOT WORK, EVER.
Ah, well, seeing as the Bible thumping, Chapel going, non conformists are out of fashion these days, I suppose they need something to preach hell fire and damnation about.
The problem here, of course, is that they’ll no doubt come up with some surveys (garnered and astroturfed from the likes of Smokefree Wales, Northwest, Northeast, you name it) claiming 99% support for the idea including 150% of smokers!
And guess what? Our trusted and thoughtful representatives in Parliament will probably believe it!
Just imagine how horrified they’ll be when they find that the death rate refuses to budge from 100%.
At the end of the day, I really can’t fathom out exactly what it is that these people think they are trying to achieve.
What exactly do they WANT us to die of? Apart from boredom.
It’s all about control.
Life kills everyone eventually. Maybe they should ban the whole of existence.
Ultimately, TPTB want to make the choice of whether or not lives are worth living. I anticipate that, for plebs, the average life span will fall during the 21st century. Pugh and his peers would, of course, also be required to make the ultimate sacrifice.
Of course statists say that these unhealthy choices will over-burden our socialist health-care system; that’s the reason for the prohibition.
Well, privatize medical care and the problem is solved.
Here in Mexico, we can ingest just about anything we want, AND, the medical care system is very cheap and private enterprise competition.
Mr Pugh appears to have forgotten the land border, a couple of bridges, oh, and the fact that he can’t just have every little sweetie in the tin.
I note that, on National Stop-Killing-The-Childreeeen-Day, the BBC have gone with scary stories about underground shisha bars where children are trying shisha and fires might break out. Law of Intended Consequences, anyone?
If you google “robert wood johnson foundation, smokeless states program” you will see that smoking bars are more about “social change” than smoking itself.
The Economist reported recently that gangs are already starting to get involved with smuggling cigarettes because of the high high price and that they are also starting to produce counterfeits of well known brands. The smuggling and counterfeit trade is expected to expand once the plain packaging rules come in to force.
Prohibition will lead to and increase in gangs getting involved, a rise in crime and violence and the inevitable “war on tobacco” complete with Czars, police spokesmen and undercover units under the direct control of
Well, don’t leave us hanging in suspense 😉
I wonder if he just went to answer ‘a knock at the door’?
Oh! 😯
The interesting things about the Shisha story are:
1) the council want to ‘license’ it, I.e. make it legal again, but effectively only for a specific ethnic group.
2) this shows that when citizens reject a law en masse the State is completely powerless to respond.
This is very sad on a personal level. Eddie Price, the man who founded Tenovus (he was a road haulier) was a family friend. I went to his funeral. And he was a smoker. The whole point of Tenovus was to raise money for Cancer research not to socially engineer. He must doing the proverbial spinning in his grave.
This just will not work of course, and we will have all the unintended consequences you’ve all mentioned above.
It’s a great shame that the Brits are so compliant with directives from “above”.
Here in Greece, civil disobedience is entrenched in the national psyche, and when TPTB try to impose laws that impinge on freedoms, and obviously serve no useful purpose other than to extend the powers of those in control, those laws are roundly ignored by the rank and file.
Hence we have the situation whereby the government (aka the EU) really, really seriously imposed the smoking ban (for the third or fourth time), complete with draconian fines, in January last year.
And now, a year on?
I smoke in all the bars and restaurants I go to; in government offices, ashtrays are on the desks. The reception in the main police station is a fug; ashtrays feature prominently on the staff sergeant’s desk.
Basically, the ban has comprehensively failed, because the people didn’t want it, and acted accordingly.
Thank God for the Greeks.
Especially those bearing gifts.
I’ll get my coat…
🙂
I think that saying has been turned on its head now – it should be “beware of Greeks receiving gifts…”
Heh!
“to think about the bigger question”
. . . and arrive at the final solution?