Government Hypocracy

This week here in England, we saw a further erosion of our civil liberties. Smoking cigarettes in enclosed public places will be against the law by this time next year.

This complete ban has come as something of a shock - not just to us little people, but to some members of the government as well. In a shameless and cowardly move, our Prime Minister, Tony Blair, ditched his own manifesto commitment for compromise on the issue and left the final decision to an open vote in our parliament.

The vote, therefore, was based on individual opinion rather than one enforced by party politics. The result was overwhelmingly in favour of a complete smoking ban - even in private clubs - everywhere, in fact, that people gather in enclosed areas.

There is one notable exception though. It will still be permissible to light up in bars frequented by serving legislators in Parliament. Funny that, isn't it? The fact is that yet again we are being told what we can or cannot do by a bunch of hypocrites who will be above any new law they impose on the rest of us.

Now, there is no doubt that a ban on smoking will help some of us quit the evil weed but in its purest form, the ban itself is deeply hypocritical. We know smoking is bad for our health. We know that passive smoking can kill and we also know that heart attacks greatly reduce in a populous that doesn't smoke. So, surely the solution is to make smoking tobacco products completely illegal?

Why stop there? Tobacco growers should be rolled into the same class of people as the opium poppy growers of Afghanistan and vilified as such. But they won't do that will they?

The reason for this is clear and repulsive in its simplicity… they want our tax dollar.

They want the revenue that smokers produce while slowly killing themselves. This attack on smokers is as weak as it is flawed. The next ban I want to see is a total cross party ban on all double standards and hypocrisy. But then who's going to vote for that?

by Petrie Hosken