Will smokers face jail in Scotland's brave new smoke-free world?
Sunday, November 25, 2012 at 10:12 Now Scotland wants to be smoke-free within a generation.
According to the Sunday Herald (which supports this optimistic and probably unattainable goal), "The SNP is to unveil its radical proposal to effectively end tobacco consumption in Scotland over the next two decades".
If the Scottish Government sets a target date it will join Finland (2040) and New Zealand (2025). Others will surely follow as the race to be first to be first hots up.
I had a chat with the Herald on Friday and, to be fair, the paper has given Forest a fair crack of the whip.
Full story: The last gasp (Sunday Herald).
Does "smoke-free" mean a ban on smoking per se or, as Senator John Crown in Ireland puts it, a ban on "all commerce in tobacco", which is very different.
The latter, for example, might allow the likes of Pat Nurse and Frank Davis to grow their own tobacco if it was for their own consumption.
On the other hand it suggests the prohibition of all tobacco products, including smokeless tobacco, which seems perverse.
Then again, I have heard a "smoke-free" country defined as one where no child is ever exposed to tobacco smoke or even the sight of someone smoking. (Give adults separate smoking rooms, then!)
Of course, we already know what a "smoke-free" country might mean for smokers. Bhutan banned the sale of tobacco in 2005 and last year the BBC reported that "it is determined to become the world's first smoking-free nation".
The law passed in 2005 "gives police sweeping powers to enter homes and search for tobacco products".
The penalties for violating Bhutan's anti-smoking laws are severe. In 2011 the BBC reported that a Buddhist monk who was caught with 72 packets of chewing tobacco "is likely to face five years in prison".
Is that the brave new world envisaged by the Scottish Government?
Before this goes any further I think we should be told.
Simon Clark
I shall be on BBC Radio Scotland in the morning.
They are trying to get someone from ASH Scotland to go head-to-head with me.
I am also writing an article on the subject. If anyone has any comments that might be useful I need them before midnight tonight!
Reader Comments (16)
A certain member of the SNP would be advised to look in the mirror or step on the scales before pontificating on health issues.
"It is a completely legal product............"
With the greatest of respect, this is by far and away the weakest argument in support of FOREST's/our 'case'.
After all - and not so long ago - it was 'legal' to smoke in pubs.
But a swift stroke of the Legislator's Pen changed ALL that. And if the same pen consigns Tobacco to history - for all the predictable 'reasons' - then it'll be 'goodbye' to one more 'argument' in our favour.
The issue, of course, remains what it has always been - a Philosophical one: what right does the State have to dictate to me what I chose to do with my body ?
The answer on everyone's lips SHOULD, of course, be 'none'.
Some chance ! And the reason that NO politician (of note) EVER mentions the concept of Freedom nowadays is quite simply that the Muppet Electorate no longer really cares about it.
I fear that just as the Age of Belief gave way to the Age of Reason, so the Age of Freedom will give way to the Age of Total Control.
And the Public will LOVE it !!
Martin, I understand your point but I disagree that the "tobacco is a legal product" argument is a weak one. The philosophical argument hasn't worked with illegal drugs such as heroin etc and shows no sign of doing so. Our arguments are based largely on pragmatism. Tobacco, like alcohol, is legal and while millions of people are consumers prohibition won't work, as was demonstrated in America during Prohibition. Tobacco is also a huge net earner for government so it would be a huge step to ban the sale of tobacco.
No government this side of the next millenium is going to throw away £12 billion (if you also include VAT) of tobacco revenue.
Not at any price.
This is quickly becoming irrelevant as people start growing their own. Twenty years ago,who would have predicted that the majority of cannabis consumed in the UK would be grown here? That was before the internet facilitated exchange of information in a previously unimaginable way.
My mother was advised to start smoking when pregnant with me. I picked up the habit myself at 8 years old. A child. I continued into adulthood. I have not harmed myself nor anyone around me but I am to be criminalised just because of who I am.
No one has ever had a problem with me smoking until 2007. Now they wish to consider jailing me and forcing their way into my home to stop me from smoking and that is just not right. How can that be a better future?
I wouldn't want my grandchildren to smoke for many reasons but mostly because of the cost. I'd hate it even more if they fell into smoking - esp because the anti smoker industry is making tobacco more accessible to kids with its support of the black market - only to then be dismissed for the rest of their lives as criminals before they've even had a chance to live.
If they call that progression, then I say the stone age was far more enlightened.
Maybe now people can accept what I have been saying since before the ban which was nothing to do with health and everything to do with the first step to tobacco eradication and criminalisation of its adult consumers who have have done no more than refuse to quit as they have been told. This is not the free, fair and tolerant country that the previous generation of smoker fought two world wars for.
Simon - if the tobacco companies can't now see that they need to empower their consumers to take legal action to end this hate campaign then I can only assume they are in together in hope that at some point Big T can save some of its business in cahoots with Big P.
Can this really get any more serious. For goodness sake . WAKE UP!"
I'd also like to add that I agree with both Simon and Martin V. The philosophical debate won't wash because as Simon says, it never has with illegal drugs.
But the ban was the line that should not have been crossed and Forest has moved along with the goalposts and I fear will continue to move as the other side sets the pace and the agenda.
In hindsight, and I am sure you won't agree Simon, but Forest should have encouraged people to break the law, the tobacco companies should have sided with their consumers and paid their fines, and like the Poll Tax demos of old, the law would have been seen to be simply unworkable and would have to have been abandoned back in favour of choice and today we would not be living in fear that the jackbooted antis will one day get their wet dream realised of seeing smokers suffer the indignity of criminalisation.
How far will Forest move towards that line and if it does become a reality, what will Forest do about it? I am sure that old Battle of Britain pilot who founded Forest, given that he was just a grass roots member of the public, a smoker, would have agreed with us that the time for direct action is long overdue.
I am sure he didn't come up the idea of a tobacco consumers rights group just for that group to keep rolling over to the whims of the antis and their stupid punitive and spiteful laws.
In Bhutan cigarettes are sold under the counter and about 10% of the adult population smokes. A packet of 10 cigs cost about $2. The average annual wage in Bhutan is $450 per year, so over 1 days pay.
Since Bhutan became a democracy after 100 years of an autocratic monarchy in 2008 it was the first time that any government in Bhutan had been challenged. In response they passed the Tobacco Control (Amendment) Act in January 2012 which allows after import taxes 300 cigarettes, 400 bidis, 50 cigars and 250 grams of other tobacco products. Smuggling is a problem.
So tobacco is now re-legalised, prohibition was a failure.
Do the people most affected get to have their say?
A couple of points you could make later this evening Simon.
1. If Scotland (or more precisely the SNP) wishes to end tobacco consumption within a generation then perhaps the SNP can say how this huge revenue gap will be filled. Will other taxes need to be raised to compensate?
2. Presumably such a dramatic move would require the approval of all voters since many people would be affected – therefore does the Scottish Parliament intend to hold a referendum on this issue or will they ride rough-shod over a part of society that they deem to have no say in their own affairs.
3. Smokers and others who also enjoy tobacco products contribute to the economy (with taxes, in their case twice) and the well being of the nation as well as anyone else – and so should have their say. They deserve nothing less.
4. How will the SNP combat the inevitable rise in organised crime in illicit tobacco products that will invariably follow?
Scotland should be renamed BANLAND
FOREST mentioned in this link and in the "Note from the Public Petions Committee Clerk"
http://f2cscotland.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/petition-01451-update.html
With ventilation solving any perceived problem with shs, the total indoor smoking ban that leaves smokers social outcasts standing out in the rain and a minority excluded from society, should never have been allowed to have come about.
Tobacco companies need to stop viewing each other as competitors and should unite now, to empower its consumers.
Is there anything more that Forest could do, to help us achieve direct action? My feeling is that this is now long overdue.
Simon -
Yes, and I also appreciate your point of view. I never said, however, that the 'pragmatic' argument was a 'weak' one - merely the weak-est.
And I suppose I should also thank you for NOT pointing out that - in an age of Global Authoritarianism - the 'freedom' argument might itself even be considered the weaker one !
Thank you for the response, nonetheless.
But let us also now be brutally frank. In the thirty-plus years of FOREST's existence, how many concessions has it managed to wring from 'government' - despite ALL the well-reasoned counter-arguments that it has raised ?
When we are dealing with FANATICS (as we are), then neither Philosophy (of Freedom) nor Pragmatism seems to have the slightest effect.
Where, after all, is the 'pragmatism' in introducing a series of measures which would INEVITABLY lead to the closure of pubs and clubs - as well as to a substantial loss of revenue (ameliorated thus far only by a draconian annual increase in taxation - a trick that surely cannot be repeated indefinitely ?).
A few weeks ago, I - together with thirty others - was hauled off a coach to face the indignity of Gestapo Interrogation by some keen young bloke who wished to know why I should have travelled to Belgium to purchase 4000 fags. He was honest enough to admit that the REAL reason for all this orchestrated intimidation was HMG's fear of lost revenue. Just doing his job, of course.
Surely, the 'pragmatic' response from HMG would have been to REDUCE tobacco tax - and bring it in line with Belgium's ?
But the fact is that the Orwellian doublethink which is such a powerful component of modern political discourse (local, national
, and global) permits any number of such inherent contradictions to flourish. And the People are as much to blame as their Masters.
Why else would 'conservatives' continue to vote Tory ?
Or 'working-class' folk Labour ?
It CAN'T be the result of something they're smoking, can it ?
Ask the ASH guy what about all that damn pollution that vehicles belch out, tell him we demand a ban within the next generation.
I can't really see this happening , Finland has since changed it's government, if Timo soni from the True Finns becomes prime-minster who's party is similar to UKIP, and believes in "live and let live" I don't think that will happen. May'be in 10 years time or so, country's around the world will be so SKINT, the'll need every penny they can get, or it will be party time for the black market.
I agree with Gary here.
However I think the political changes coming through in British politics may be the ones required to finally break the disastrous policies of the last twenty years of the corporate governmental relationship.
Let's face it that's the root of the anti smoking problem too.
Europe is on the verge of financial disaster due to this not to mention the UK.
I think these problems are political in nature, the populace as a whole are starting to cotton on to what's been going on here.
Government by vested interest and social engineering.
Doomed to fail, fail it will.
There will be no LibLbCon in ten years, they dug their own graves they forgot the interests of the people who put them there, the electorate.
This mistrust and fleeing from the major parties has only just began.
It is the system that replaces that, that's the bit the has to be right.
It will be a different world indeed within a few years.
c777 -
I think I know EXACTLY where you're coming from, and can only hope (as I do) that you're right.
Thankfully, Freedom-lovers do not have to rely upon the Dumb Majority. If they did, we'd probably still be experiencing the feudal serfdom of the Middle Ages - which would make the planned neo-serfdom of the Technocratic Age somewhat redundant.
But, in order to avoid the nightmarish possibilities of the latter, a certain 'tipping point' (in terms of what may be called 'Public Opinion') needs to be reached.
How close do you think we are to that ?