10 Propositions on Smoking Bans

Notes for a meeting of the House of Commons All Party Pharmacy Group, 1 December, 2004

1 Because of the net amount smokers contribute to taxes, their activity is good - not bad - for the State.

2 A ban over-rides the important right of people to volunteer to work and spend in risky environments if they choose.

3 The Government proposes a ban in pubs, except those drink-driven, spit-and-sawdust places which the working class most use (but it is the working class thwe Government purports to want to help).

4 Liverpool's smoking ban proponents cite the area's high smoking levels as compared with richer areas in the South East. This is an argument for Liverpudlians to become less working-class in their habits. But a ban panders to left-wingery, when what's needed is a robustly right-wing sort of thought.

5 Left-wingery nowadays proposes the need for "non-judgemental" "support" of the "addicted". Right-wingery is more likely to be succesful with its message that shame and pride are more important motivators.

6 The anti-smokers have such a strong case (1:10 heavy smokers get lung cancer) that they should not over-egg their argument as they do. See Tim Luckhurst, Smoking and mirrors: the anti-cigarette lobby isn't telling us the whole of the story, The Independent, 16 November, 2004

7 The anti-smokers routinely claim that a ban will greatly reduce the number of workers who die from passive smoking. But they claim this before we have any idea of the reduction in passive-smoking deaths which better ventilation and voluntary bans and rules would have produced anyway. (It takes about twenty years for one to know the real effects of any smoking initiative, since most smoking deaths occur years after exposure.)

8 The banners claim that they are doing nothing very draconian granted how many voluntary bans are coming in anyway. But this is an internally-contradictory argument. One can celebrate voluntary bans as being both good rules and voluntary. And then go on to note that the important thing about voluntary activity is that it contains the positive good of enforcing personal responsibility, and the negative virtue of avoiding the need for compulsion (which doesn't).

9 The leading anti-smoking epidemiologist Richard Doll's own evidence says that a few years of moderate smoking does not much dent a person's life expectancy. The problem is of course that smoking is tough to give up.

10 New Labour has a very muddled approach to its nannying role. Fur-farming, hunting, food ads, smoking, smacking, are all disparaged or banned (on various and badly-argued grounds). Gambling, all-day-drinking and cannabis are all encouraged (on various and poorly-argued grounds). Anti-Social Behaviour Orders control mini-thugs and football hooligans, and curfews are imposed, (in rather a good way); but action against vicious and violent protestors is at best muddled.