Bring back smoking

Does anyone get this burning feeling that we've got it all wrong with this smoking ban business? Everyone, bar some serious smokers and clubbers who'd smelt Irish and Scottish sweaty dens, were celebrating the coming of 1 July 2007. Weary smokers were looking for another excuse to quit; non-smokers were waiting for the fresher air. I was certain that this was a triumphant, brave decision by our in-touch politicians to bring England into the 21st century - let's make our country healthier.

But I'm now getting the niggling feeling that we've got it all wrong. Don't get me wrong, I'm not thinking about this from a petty personal point of view - I like the clear air that doesn't make my eyes water. Also, I'm not a member of the "second hand smoke is not harmful" nuts that still exist out there. No. I'm not writing this for my self-interest. I’m thinking that we’ve got it wrong, because we’ve let the government legislate on a trendy hate.

I think we've let ourselves, fellow Englanders, down. We have let science, fashionable hates and popular moralising merge in such an insipid way that we forgot to think about our liberal principles, the limited role of the state and our choices as free individuals.

The legislation that led to the day of the ban is, granted, informed on science and history that weighs a heavy burden on the brutal tactics of big fag companies. But, if you’ve got a problem with the world smoking too much, I think you better ask questions of the corporate and political elite that has backed the big tobacco companies. (Particularly as these companies continue to use the same hard sell techniques – smoke and you’ll look better, feel better and have more sex – in the third world that we got rid of ages ago.) But, don’t support this fashionable legislating at its very worst.

Forever a decade behind the US (why not the French? they are cooler), smoking has becoming such a hated activity on these shores over the last few years. It has become so fashionable to hate smoking that scientist salivate in their descriptions of what smoking does to you, artists preserve rotten lungs, libraries of books are published detailing how smoking can fuck you up. Hating smoking has become such a popular part of the art and media culture it was only a matter of time that politicians were to align themselves to the sweet air of the anti-smoking lobby. As Wilson hung with the Beatles and the ‘66 winners and Blair basked in Cool Britannia, backbenchers wanted to get in on the cool anti-smoking act. And how they seemed so right. So in touch. Their finger on the pulse of the nation. Oh, how wrong we were to let the government meddle. Now it feels we are on a slope, waiting to be lubricated by the Daily Mail, for us to slip down into a pool of conservative forced pleasantness (or incarcerated if you’re in any way unpleasant).

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Let’s make a new rule: never again shall we use the blunt instrument of legislation to randomly manage risks that involve our choices.

Smoking is a risk, but a risk that it is free for people to take. Passive smoking is a risk, but one that can be significantly limited through public pressure by creating smoking only zones and well circulated environments, which was being achieved in recent years.

Driving is a risk, but a risk that is free for people to take. Passive driving (walking, cycling, running) is a risk, but one that can be through pressure be severely limited by creating speed limits etc.

Banning smoking in pubs is like banning driving on country roads.

The analogy may not be water-tight, but the logic is plain to see. (Simon Jenkins' analogy with cats and dogs is better.) If you want legislation to manage risk that involve our choices, let’s do it properly, let’s go the whole hog and ban everything. Let’s ban driving on country roads and cats and dogs anywhere…

…or perhaps let’s not legislate for every risk that becomes fashionable and let’s not become a short-sighted, paternalistic nation.

But that's where I wake up and realise that we are already there. Selling arms everywhere whilst upgrading cannabis to grade B. Banning smoking indoors over here whilst selling ciggies the good old fashioned way over there.

Fuck it, on that note I'm starting smoking. Won’t you join me outside?