Saturday
Feb252017
Dr Neil McKeganey: The Pleasure of Smoking
Saturday, February 25, 2017 at 15:16 From our Pleasure Zone event the other night ...
Dr Neil McKeganey, director of the Centre for Substance Use Research in Glasgow, discusses his recent report, 'The Pleasure of Smoking: The Views of Confirmed Smokers'.
Click here to watch it on YouTube. Warmly recommended.
Reader Comments (3)
Brilliant presentation.
However, my hackles were raised by an extremely patronising question from the floor asking if smoking is more of an addiction for low income people than middle class people simply because they have to spend a relatively larger part of their income on tobacco.
Pat, the point the person was trying to make IMO was that it was *considered* more objectionable if low income people still smoked. He self-identified as a working class northerner. I think he observed well, a lot of the lifestyle bullying we are faced with is solely motivated by snobbery. For example, regulation on high calorie food outlets often exempts posh eateries because middle class people can make informed choices, which by definition tends to suggest policy-makers think those who like to eat at McDonald's can't.
Difficult to tell not being in the room so I'll take your word for it.
Certainly it is true that the poor working class smokers are more of a target because they are easier to bully and price out of smoking - and they are probably more likely to source cheaper black market tobacco hence they'll probably also be the first to be criminalised.
I know all about the snobbery aligned with this issue. I've been saying for ages that snobbery is a huge factor in anti-smokerism.