You will be aware of a campaign – now in its second year – called Stoptober.
It's an initiative designed to encourage people who want to stop smoking.
Apart from the ridiculous name, and the questionable use of public money to promote it, I have no real problem with Stoptober. It would be foolish to deny that some smokers want to quit and if it helps them, fine.
Campaigns like Stoptober are only a problem if (a) the cost to the taxpayer is grossly disproportionate to the number of people who successfully quit; and (b) 'encouragement' to quit quickly turns into nagging, denormalisation or worse.
This happened with No Smoking Day which began, I think, as a genuine attempt to help people who wanted to quit. Subsequently it became the perfect excuse for councils and companies to introduce all manner of anti-smoking measures that directly affected even those who had no intention of quitting.
So far I haven't seen anything like that associated with Stoptober. Nevertheless I know some of you find it offensive so you may be interested in Pat Nurse's counter campaign.
She calls it Octabber (which she admits is an equally silly name) and it was launched last year to counteract the misleading impression that most smokers want to quit.
Now it's back and Pat has created a dedicated Octabber blog she describes as "A place for adult tobacco consumers who enjoy smoking and choose not to quit during October or any other month of the year".
There's also an Octabber Facebook group that currently has 210 likes.
Pat says: "Ideally I'd like 28 volunteers to take part during October and tell me why they love their tabs, why they're not quitting and why they're fed up with public health gimmicks like Stoptober."
If you haven't got time to write something Pat will happily call you and take a quick statement over the phone.
To contact her email patnurse@btinternet.com.