Smoking out freedom

I recently saw this interesting post on X/Twitter about how smoking bans are a touchstone for a society’s general attitude to freedom. I won’t make any further comment beyond saying that they are an examplar of the dictum of science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein that “The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”

I have a running theory that a country’s attitude towards smoking tobacco tells you whether or not it has succumbed to the liberal technocratic project.

Smoking is one of those things that the data-driven managerial consensus - the same one that produced The Science™ as an infallible moral authority - has pulled out all the stops to not just discourage but eliminate all together.

It all happened very quickly. The wholesale rejection of smoking is now so entrenched in our cultural ether that it is very much taken as the only true Enlightened position.

What’s astounding is how quickly it happened - seemingly in a single generation. It was a multi-pronged whole-of-society approach involving a very strategic shaming campaign (those odious cigarette pack labels showing deformities) and every other policy lever in the governance toolbox.

The fact that France of all nations, just this summer, took the extraordinary step of banning smoking in outdoor public spaces including parks and beaches, says everything.

First they shame you, then they tax the shit out of tobacco products, and then they regulate where you can smoke. And that space eventually starts to shrink - from just some outdoor places, to now “just” this corner where we tell you (in Singapore they set up cones around which you can smoke like an undignified crack addict but you can’t stray beyond the painted box on the floor, and if you do, you get yelled at like a child that colored outside of the lines), and then someday, to nowhere at all.

I now consider only the countries which have a laissez-faire approach to smokers the only “real” ones left. It’s a good proxy for the embrace of genuine romanticism in an age of technocratic management. This isn’t just plaguing liberal democracies by the way - even places like the UAE and China are increasingly shrinking spaces where you can light up a cigar or cigarette.

It’s why I love some parts of the Middle East and Southeast Asia so much. They still feel like real places - not Disneyland versions where everything is micromanaged. They are still wild and free, unmolested by the managerial revolution.