Simon Clark - Taking Liberties

Lively discussion on Five Live last night but shorter than planned because of other breaking news stories.

It followed the publication of a report by a Department of Health adviser. Dr Hilary Graham found that Anti-smoking campaigns turn those who light up 'into lepers' (Daily Mail).

We've been saying this for years ("smokers treated like second class citizens" etc etc) but it's good to have it confirmed in an 'official' document.

Anyway, Five Live put me up against Alex Cunningham, the MP for Stockton North who has been trying to introduce a bill to ban smoking in cars with children. Cunningham sounded decent enough. His view is that there is no benefit in stigmatising smokers. He said he wants to take people with him but imposing an unnecessary law on smokers (the vast majority of whom don't light up in a car with children present) is not the action of a man who believes in consensus.

I was a bit bolshier than I intended to be but it was late (almost midnight) and I was tired. The gist of my argument was that intolerance towards smokers is increasing and I quoted some of the comments in response to the story about Dr Graham's report: "Smokers disgust me", "Smokers are disgusting and dirty outcasts", "Poor, sad nicotine addicts" etc etc.

I also mentioned that someone has posted on the Forest website the comment "I hope you die of cancer". This, I said, was the same comment that was directed at us by a Bristol councillor when we sent a mailshot to 18,000 councillors a few years ago.

My main point however was that while these comments do not (in my view) represent the majority of non-smokers, the intolerance they represent is being driven by the tobacco control industry and fuelled by government and politicians like Alex Cunningham.

I mentioned, as an example of scaremongering, the government's claim that 11,000 non-smokers were dying every year as a result of passive smoking. I also mentioned the campaign, funded with public money, that featured the slogan 'If you smoke you stink'. If that's not designed to whip up intolerance I don't know what is.

Pat Nurse came on after Cunningham and I had finished our spat and did a great job – the sane, moderate voice of the consumer!

You can listen here. It begins at 1:19:10.

Update on Wednesday, February 29, 2012 at 9:37 by

Simon Clark

According to Dr Graham's report:

The history of public health is scarred by policies which, pursued in the name of health protection and promotion, have served to intensify public vilification and state-sanctioned discrimination against already disadvantaged groups.

However:

She praised the success of anti-smoking policies which mean around one in five Britons is now a smoker, against four out of five in the 1950s.

That's the problem. Policies that stigmatise the consumer are considered a success if they reduce consumption rates.