twopointouch

Feeling angry about the smoking ban. Sorry for off-topic.

I have two weeks left before the UK smoking ban kicks in; two weeks to cause havoc and mayhem. Because we smokers are the true face of anarchy in the UK, eh?

No-one ever voiced any objections to public smoking before about 1995. These terribly frail people who start coughing every time you spark up within a 100 feet didn’t exist. No one moaned about the smell. Why is that? What’s happened? It’s not because our society was much more liberal, I think. It seemed like most people were more conservative about a lot of social matters like sex and drugs and public behaviour back then. And not because a significantly larger number of people smoked. The percentage of the population remains about the same, though the number of smoking ABC1s is much reduced. Neither was it because there were fewer facts known about smoking or passive smoking. It’s because there were (and are) far more important fish to fry.

What seems to have changed and have allowed this to happen is the increasing climate of fear. Most British people, the opinion-survey people MORI tell us, are terrified. They are frightened of almost everything: from their food to their children. The biggest fear that the majority have is terrifying prospect of… ermm.. teenagers ‘hanging around’. The ‘hoodie menace’ is everywhere, it seems. We think we’re going to get mugged, robbed, bombed, poisoned and raped. We’re frightened of our young; we’re frightened of anyone different; we’re frightened of our food. Apparently, since the terrorist attacks of 11/9/2001, there’s been a real step-change. British society has become considerably more frightened. And the further away those terrible events are, the more frightened we become. Again, according to MORI polls.

This climate of fear is illusionary, of course. Statistically, we’re actually less likely to come to any kind of harm than ever before. We really have never had it so good. We earn more, are healthier and crime levels are lower than at any time in the last forty years.

So while the dangers of smoking existed before, and were well publicised, no one gave a shit until recent times. Until we decided that danger was round every corner. And oh - how easy it is to exact complete vengeance on one of these stupid hang-ups about something so much less important than climate change, global and local poverty or public services. It took the C21st climate of fear to turn the facts about one drug, among many that are allowed to us, into a public policy that curtails all of our freedoms, smoker or not. Rather than exorcise the smokers, I’d suggest that there are other, larger demons to be exorcised.

/rant