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.
Clutching at straws there Mudgie.
ReplyDeleteThe attitude towards smoking is not about controlling people but about protecting them.
ReplyDeleteThere is an overwhelming body of evidence that tobacco smoke is a dangerous carcinogen. Controlling its spread is akin to controlling the use of asbestos, insisting on cleaning up diesel exhausts, removing tetra-ethyl lead from petrol, controlling substances like trike in industry
FWIW I enjoy smoking cigars and a pipe but do understand that other people don't appreciate having to breath my smoke so only indulge in isolated outdoor areas.
Yawn. How many times have we been over this before?
DeleteYes, there are risks attached to smoking tobacco, as there are to many other activities. But, so long as it doesn't impinge on you, why shouldn't adults be allowed to engage in it? Why not let smokers have their own pubs and clubs where antismokers would never need to go?
Yawning doesn't invalidate an argument
DeleteSmoking in a public place does impinge on other people.
I am all in favour of having separate, well ventilated, smoking rooms as they do in other countries.
What is your attitude to compulsory seat belt wearing for motorists; or motor cycle helmets?
Ah good, so you don't support blanket smoking bans after all :-)
DeleteSeat belts are really a bit off topic. It's a trivial infringement of liberty that I really couldn't be bothered about.
Motorcycle helmets are maybe a better example, and that's off topic too. But remember Fred Hill died in prison after campaigning against them.
As with most things, it's a question of balancing competing rights: your right to smoke and my right not to breathe it in. A sensible compromise would have been to retain smoking rooms and carriages in workplaces and on trains and have separate rooms for smokers in pubs, although the shift towards knocking them through into open spaces and having dining areas throughout would have made that difficult in many. There should also have been an exemption for members' clubs, although it would have been difficult to police: in Germany, some pubs became members only overnight to get round the ban, membership being extended to anyone who signed a book on the bar.
ReplyDeleteIn Denmark if a pub is a certain size and owned by the landlord you can smoke. Copenhagen has some great ones. These pubs are packed. Non smoking ones much less so.
DeleteNige will bring back smoking in pubs!
ReplyDeleteI hope !
DeleteFarage bring back smoking in pubs? You're having a laugh. There won't be any pubs left by the time Keir's moronic Scheißeschau collapses, It's over for pubs, pal.
ReplyDeleteI take no notice of their silly regulations or these idiot public health fanatics who are killing our pubs and freedoms. Whilst you can't smoke in pubs otherwise the landlord gets it when some creep reports it, i take great delight in sparking up elsewhere. Good countries to visit for smokers are Austria, Germany, Greece, and Switzerland. Good prices for tobacco and many friendly smokers.
ReplyDelete