Simon Clark - Taking Liberties

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.