Why are smokers treated worse than terrorists?

Friday April 23, 2010

Smokers are either wrong or stupid; zero tolerance is the only permitted attitude, says Phil Whiteley, and no health official or politician feels even remotely shamefaced about interfering in other people’s lives

Many years ago, when I was working for a social work magazine, I was talking to a social services director in the south of England. He observed that, although a centre-left voter, he always preferred working for moderate Conservative councils than for Labour councils. The reason was that the Tories would just give him a reasonable budget and let him, the expert, run things. A Labour social services chairperson would always be interfering, assuming that he or she could do things better than him.

Odd how that conversation should stick in the mind for 20 years. It is now clear, after 13 years in government, that telling people what to do, even if they have much less expertise and information, is a fatal tendency among Labour politicians. They tell us what to eat, how much to drink, not to smoke, how much to exercise, despite having no real expertise on nutrition, health or sport; with the puritan assumption that physical health is the only form of health, and no knowledge or understanding of us as individuals.

The vitriol aimed at smokers is particularly hard-line. There’s no allowance; no empathy; not a scintilla of understanding that, perhaps, the human body is not just a machine, and that palliatives like a ciggie and a gin and tonic can help you through the day. The policy is also, curiously, misogynistic. I’ve done a lot of social work, and every adult woman I’ve known who had suffered sexual abuse as a girl smokes heavily.

Psychology

I think the psychology works like this: it’s an activity that occupies the hands, has an anaesthetic quality, alleviates anxiety, helps bond with people and has also (in my experience) warded off suicide. If you have ever tried to talk someone away from a cliff ledge, you will find that a packet of 20 and a functioning lighter are your most reliable allies. So, in some contexts, smoking has saved lives.

In the campaign against smokers, however, no allowance is made for this. Smokers are either wrong or stupid; zero tolerance is the only permitted attitude, and no health official or politician will feel even remotely shamefaced about their blatant interference in other people’s lives. There is no awareness that there might be a long-term moral hazard by infantilizing the citizenry.

They have no understanding of the very dangerous precedent established by the argument that ‘it saves lives’. You will live longer if you go to bed early with a milky drink. Does that mean the government should set a curfew and ban nightcaps? I shouldn’t give them ideas.

Exception

There is a curious exception to the Left’s officiousness with regards to one’s daily life. If your day job is setting off bombs in shops, underground stations or pizza restaurants, they want to empathise. They want to understand. What is your cause? “There’s no peace without justice” they thunder.

Unfortunately, they assume that the dynamic is palindromic: that because injustice often provokes violence, that therefore every violent act has a just cause. This way, a terrorist movement cannot lose; the more extreme their atrocities, the more support they attract, whether their ‘cause’ is a homeland for their people or exterminating all Jews and gays (for example, Al Qaeda and Hamas). So while decent citizens get pushed about, those dedicated to violence get their own conference and can set the agenda. Appeasement, in other words.

I say this with great sadness. My values are left – at least, I think they are. I think politics should be about ending racism, ending poverty and protecting the environment. So I’ve no one to vote for.

Phil Whiteley is an author and journalist. He discusses cultural influences that make workplaces much worse than they ought to be in Meet the New Boss, available only online. Click here