Smoking

Good and bad news from China: A Chinese county has rescinded a rule urging its government workers to smoke more in order to boost tax income. The authorities in Gong’an county had told civil servants and teachers to smoke 230,000 packs of the locally-made Hubei brand each year. Those who did not smoke enough or used brands from other provinces or overseas faced being fined or even fired. The Good news is that the Chinese recognise the contribution smokers make to the public finances; the Bad news is that they seem to be encouraging a rather stern form of protectionism. Still, you can’t have everything – though it’s a sad

And so it continues. Not content with discovering “passive” smoking, the health boffins have now discovered something called “third-hand smoking”  – all the better, presumably, to drive the last remaining smokers into the mountains (be they the Rockies or the Western Highlands) where, armed with only our wits, a lighter and a dwindling supply of contraband tobacco, we shall slip from cave to cave, lair to lair, all the while pursued by an army of “health professionals” hell-bent on saving us from ourselves… *The hero of Michael Heath’s long-running Spectator cartoon strip, The Outlaw, Michael Common is the last, still-persecuted, smoker in England.

Courtesy of the Daily Mash: SMOKERS BANNED FROM LOOKING AT CIGARETTES WHILE SMOKING SMOKERS will have to hold a large piece of card over their face so they cannot look at the cigarette they are smoking, ministers said last night. The ‘smoking mask’ will include a small mouth hole and a handle though later models may be fitted with elasticated straps… The mask will also carry a warning which reads: “Lighting a Cigarette While Wearing This Mask May Cause You to Set Fire to the Mask Instead of the Cigarette and Burn Your Face Off.” Health secretary, Alan Johnson, said: “If you can’t see nicotine, it can’t see you. And,

What a shower. From Simon Clark’s Taking Liberties blog, comes this unsurprising element of the government’s latest consultation on smoking: “Question 12: Do you believe that more should be done by the Government to reduce exposure to secondhand smoke within private dwellings or in vehicles used primarily for private purposes? If so, what do you think could be done?” This is, I assume, a consultation that only applies to England but doubtless there’s something just as depressing and invasive being planned in Scotland too. The sad thing, of course, is that the Tories will be little, if at all, better. It’s enough to make one consider moving to the Matanuska-Susitna

More evidence emerges that England selected the right man when they asked Fabio Capello to rescue their football team. From the Times today: On another issue – Wayne Rooney’s smoking habit – Capello was curiously indifferent, a stance that brought out sweat beads on the foreheads of his FA employers, fearful of their manager unwittingly being cast as the spokesman for a generation of English butt-heads. Capello later returned to clarify his position and the moral guardians were headed off at the pass… Capello’s lack of interest in making a judgment revealed that the difference between football people in Europe and Britain is not merely a matter of tactics or

If Philip Morris commissioned research which found that the smoking ban in England & Wales, a year old today, had been a dismal failure many, perhaps even most, people would dismiss said research, considering it partial. Well they would say that wouldn’t they? So why are figures* from anti-smoking organisations such as ASH or Cancer Research UK accepted uncritically? Maybe they are indeed sound but I see no great reason for ignoring the vested interests at play on their side of the dispute while pointing out those that might influence more tobacco-friendly findings. *I should say that while I do indeed view the figures cited by Cancer Research with some

My old friend Gerald Warner has, I’m glad to discover, a blog at the Telegraph entitled Is It Just Me? (sometimes, yes, Gerald, I’m afraid it is…). In his most recent post Gerald reports that the health industry has opened a new front in the Tobacco Wars. Not content with persecuting smokers, the unco guid are preparing to take aim at snuff aficionados. Seriously. As Gerald observes, this is no surprise: Of course, it had to happen. The health fascists, having overrun the cigarette, cigar and pipe-smokers, are now advancing on the snuff-takers. We have been here before. Persecution of snuff-taking began in the early 17th century when Sultan Amurath

The boys at The Daily Mash have the gory details… SMOKERS will have to hold a large piece of card over their face so they cannot look at the cigarette they are smoking, ministers said last night. The ‘smoking mask’ will include a small mouth hole and a handle, though later models may be fitted with elasticated straps… The mask will also carry a warning which reads: “Lighting a Cigarette While Wearing This Mask May Cause You to Set Fire to the Mask Instead of the Cigarette and Burn Your Face Off.”

It could have been worse, I suppose. There was a proposal that you’d soon need a special license to be permitted to purchase cigarettes in Scotland. Presumably this would be accompanied by arm-twisting from “health care professionals” to persuade you to stop, or mandatory sessions with a shrink to demonstrate that you were indeed sufficiently and genuinely bonkers as to be granted a special license to enjoy abuse tobacco… Happily, if somewhat surprisingly, that proposal hasn’t actually passed. Yet. Still, yesterday the Scottish parliament confirmed that it was going to ban the display of cigarettes in shops. Apparently a ban on tobacco advertising – itself an outrageous abridgment of liberty

Anthony Holden in The Observer: Carmen is back at Covent Garden for the first time since last summer’s Orwellian smoking ban and I’m delighted to report that the Royal Opera has taken not the slightest notice. If there’s any opera in which onstage smoking should be mandatory, this is it. Cigarette girls and soldiers alike all puff their heads off during the first act, to the point where the fumes drift gratifyingly into mid-stalls. And, even better, there are none of those ludicrous health-and-safety signs out front, as, for instance, at the Old Vic, to warn us of the perils of entering a smoke-stained auditorium. Of course in plucky Scotland

It’s entirely possible that the research cited in this New York Times story has been corrupted by the fact that it seems to have been sponsored, in part or at “arm’s length” , by a tobacco company. That’s fine. But I would have thought a more useful article would have spent its time demonstrating that this researcher’s conclusions were, on the evidence, bunk rather than seeking to dismiss them on the grounds of where their funding came from. Or, to put it another way, can we expect the NYT, or any other newspaper, to treat smoking-related claims made by government or other branches of the health industry that have just

The latest salvo in the War on People of Smoke: Displaying cigarettes in shops could be banned under government plans being considered in a bid to reduce smoking and discourage children from starting. Ministers are also considering tougher controls on vending machines in pubs and restaurants. A public consultation due to start within months will call for the public’s opinions on these issues. Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo said it was “vital” to teach children that “smoking is bad”. “If that means stripping out vending machines or removing cigarettes from behind the counter, I’m willing to do that,” she said. Whatever next? I suppose there’s little point in arguing that

I have no real interest in the SCHIP brouhaha and am puzzled by Bush’s to veto a bill that would expand children’s health insurance. This can’t be a very sensible move, politically-speaking. Anyway, my only interest in the matter was in the proposal that it be funded by taxes on tobacco.  I was interested to see (former smoker) Matt Yglesias say this: The bill would also raise cigarette taxes, which, again, is a good thing to do since higher cigarette taxes cause either more revenue (a good thing) or else less smoking (a good thing) or else some combination of these two good things. Well, ain’t that a pretty thing: