It’s tempting to respond to the BMA’s extraordinary proposal to ban smoking in cars with
a Thin End of the Wedge argument. Ban smoking even on the part of an unaccompanied adult, sitting in a car by the side of the road? How long before they’re banning it in the home, eh? But hold it
right there. The proposal isn’t just scary for where it might lead. It’s scary all by itself. The notion that a grown up can be barred from self-harm by smoking a fag by himself, in his own car,
his own space, on the basis that it might kill him sooner rather than later, should be unthinkable in a free society.
Normally, this sort of authoritarianism is justified on the basis of what it might do to the kiddies – and indeed, the Welsh and Scottish assemblies are pondering whether to ban smoking in cars in which a child is travelling, as South Africa has already done – or to non-smokers, such as the 2007 ban on smoking in public places.
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