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| Jacinda Arderrn, New Zealand Prime Minister, a country on the point of banning cigarette buying |
New Zealand has gone too far. That is not I thought I would ever write, thinking of the land of the Kiwis as being a sensible, even slightly dull, country. Yet the country's government is now proposing a ban on people buying cigarettes. The law has not been passed yet - and I hope it never is - but it proposes to stop people buying tobacco products if they were born after 2008.
But not everywhere. For simplicity I divide substances we consume into black, white and grey:
Why am I opposed to this move when I only ever smoke an occasional cigar and have not done so for months? If all the tobacco in the world disappeared tomorrow (which is what happened in the film Yesterday, along with the Beatles’ songs) I would not be that worried and, although I was sceptical at first of its value, I accept and agree with banning smoking in pubs, restaurants, etc.
1. Black ones are obviously and immediately toxic, sometimes poisonous, things like cyanide and sulphuric acid, and access to them needs to be strictly controlled for the sake of safety.
2. White substances are harmless and usually nutritious, food and drink essential for the continuance of life – things like water, basic foodstuffs and oxygen.
3. Grey substances come last, things we do not absolutely need to survive and which will not kill us immediately but often provide pleasure, yet can also be dangerous and addictive.
You can classify everything into one of these categories. Sugar, for example, is grey. Human beings can – and have – managed without it but many people (myself included) have a sweet tooth and, as the song goes, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. Yet too much sugar can make you obese, cause your teeth to rot and can possibly cause cancers.
No-one is suggesting that we ban putting sugar in tea or coffee, yet most of us accept that it is a good idea to discourage people from consuming too much of it. Hence government advertising to that effect. Likewise alcohol. People ruin their lives by drinking too much but that is not considered a good reason to stop me enjoying a pint of beer, a glass of whisk(e)y* or wine..
The one attempt by a country to ban alcohol completely - Prohibition in the USA, which lasted from 1920 to 1933 - is usually accepted as a failure now and actually contributed to the problems caused by drink by encouraging people to consume badly made and unpurified booze because there was no legal control over the production and sale of it. If it is illegal in the first place there is no way that you can stop the bad stuff being produced and sold.
A similar process is happening with soft drugs now, which are gradually being decriminalised in many countries. The UK lags behind in this process, so scared are the politicians of alienating those newspapers, such as The Daily Mail and The Times, which are dead set against legalising it. The British government is denying itself tax revenue and encouraging crime as a result.
Politicians regularly use drugs – residues of cocaine have been detected all over the Palace of Westminster (see here if you doubt this) and a senior figure like Michael Gove has admitted using it – yet they do not allow others to consume it legally and propose ever more draconian punishments for recreational drug users. The blatant hypocrisy is almost breath-taking. Don’t do as I do, but do as I say instead in the usual formula.
I believe that all drugs should be in classed in the ‘grey’ area. Whether you take sugar in your tea, enjoy a drink and/or a smoke or inject yourself with mind-altering substances is up to you as an individual and not up to the state. What you do when you drink, smoke or take drugs, however, needs to be controlled by legislation. So you cannot drink and drive, smoke near others or operate machinery if you are high, or your concentration is lessened, in any way
The other side of the coin of allowing people to decide whether or not they consume these ‘grey’ substances is that they then have to take responsibility if the harmful side-effects come through at a later stage. If you develop lung cancer or sclerosis of the liver because you have smoked or drunk too much, that is not the fault of the person or company that sells you the stuff but your fault for buying and consuming it in the first place.
Buyer beware. We have all heard the phrase and warnings are plastered on the side of cigarette and cigar packets these days, so no-one can be unaware of the dangers of smoking. Likewise drinkers are encouraged to ‘Please Drink Responsibly’, that ‘please’ presumably being put there as the drinks industry attempts to keep the code of restraint voluntary, rather than prohibitive, as it has long been for tobacco.
In the USA it is fashionable to sue tobacco companies for selling a product that is addictive. This results in the absurd situation of executives denying the obvious - that tobacco is addictive - in order not to admit to peddling something potentially dangerous. Yet all grey substances can be addictive for the simple reason that they provide pleasure. If an individual decides to go ahead and smoke/drink/take drugs that is their decision and suing a company for enabling them to do so is merely passing the buck.
Government prohibition of tobacco is now set to become absolute in New Zealand, the reason being that people from indigenous communities (Maoris) still smoke heavily and need protection from the evils of tobacco. Yet, by removing the voluntary element from the inevitable reduction of consumption, the country’s government is now trying to move tobacco from the grey to the black category.
I am sure this is wrong. Cigarettes do not kill everyone who smokes. Healthy people can die from cancer, which is notoriously random in the way it strikes. Sometimes those who abuse their bodies lead long and even healthy lives until they inevitably die Let them have some fun on the way in their consumption of the grey stuff – as long as they take responsibility for doing so.
* Whisky is from Scotland. Whiskey comes from the USA, Canada or Ireland, where I am writing.
My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com
A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL READERS WITH HOPE FOR A PANDEMIC FREE 2022
Edwin Lerner
