Try not to choke on your lunch.
A 'major new report' published today claims that one in three of the UK’s 10 million current smokers has a mental disorder.
See the Royal College of Physicians press release.
Mental health is a serious issue so I'm going to be careful what I write, but if I had a mind to I would be tempted to estimate the number of anti-smokers who have a mental disorder.
It would be quite easy to do a report. You could study the comments about smokers and smoking online and deduce (entirely objectively of course) how many were written by people who are stark raving bonkers.
Throw in some of the emails Forest receives and the figure would be quite high. This morning, for example, I saw one that read: 'DIE OF LUNG CANCER YOU CUNT'.
An April Fool press release is developing in my mind as I write:
'A major new report today claims that one in four of the UK's anti-smoking community has a mental disorder.'
Perhaps not. Mental health is way too serious an issue to make fun of but the report raises some interesting questions:
What is the definition of 'mental disorder' and has it changed?
Is addiction to nicotine/alcohol/chocolate etc a form of mental disorder?
Come 2034, when Scotland officially becomes 'smoke-free', will everyone who lights up in defiance of the modern anti-smoking orthodoxy be classified as unhinged?
And what will happen to them if they are?
Just asking.