What the hell has happened?

To go back to the problem of smokers in society.

We are undergoing a behaviour eradication putsch – literally – the aim of the Anti Smoking Industry is to make sure the smoking habit of smokers is eradicated – desisted, deaded – made kaput. Its war is against the 2O% to 30% of the population who smoke – in the west. And aimed at the rest of the world too. It's a world-wide onslaught in the name of health for the masses, the ignorant, and those who have fallen into the clutches of the evil Tobacco Giants – fought on our behalf! All kinds of Drug Companies are making an excellent profit on the back of this orchestrated behaviour modification. And politics has jumped on the prohibition wagon too.

Smoking has been a human habit since 5000 BC and more in one form or another...and I know whilst I lived in Africa, the men (and women) smoked without the help of any Tobacco Company – they smoked Dagga which is a weed occurring everywhere and very easy to grow – cannabis in it's natural form without the help of genetic alteration, in existence since 2000 BC. I regularly had to bail our handyman out of prison, because of his “evil” habit – he was a Rastafarian. And the police could never understand my ire.

Smoking world-wide happens in such a variety of customs and in such ingenious ways that the people who practice smoking take it as a perfectly normal thing to do. Different cultures practise different forms of smoking – you could take your pick.. in pipes, rolled tubes, one hits, through water, through inhaling smoke over the burning weed, for ceremonies, for celebrations, for death, for altered states of consciousness – or just for plain pleasure.

The grim determination of the Anti Smoking Industry to turn us away from smoking only really took a grip when they were able to demonise Second Hand Smoke. And they did it through dishonesty. I was sitting in a restaurant, in a smoking area inside, just off the pavement - (when those were allowed) - and a group of happily chatting women, walking up the road alongside exhaust belching buses and lorries, suddenly swung in through the restaurant doors to make their way to a table. Suddenly, the laughter went, and one woman clamped her handkerchief over her nose to protect herself from the fatal smoke issuing from my tiny hand-rolled cigarettelet. The shocking part of it was, I saw real fear in her eyes! FEAR! She believed my smoke was harming her!

And there it is – it's the fear that has been generated into ordinary people by the “scientific” studies that PROVE second hand smoke is fatal to people. Smoking has been proved to cause almost every known disease and second hand smoke has been proved to be even worse because smokers' lungs have made it even more deadly than the smoke smokers inhale. It's even fatal out of doors. Smokers are not in an altered state of consciousness, but perfectly rational people - not dangerous or crazed.

The way in which small bureaucrats have climbed onto the bandwagon of smoker persecution, by making smoking “illegal” in open air places, like station platforms, shows how keen they are to earn brownie points amongst the terrified non-smoking population. God help us now that little important councillors have been given the same powers. How CAN it be dangerous to others to smoke out of doors? I was hoping UK was going to remain one of the clearer thinking countries - but power has been given away to the little bureaucrats.

Introducing the cheeldren! This is turning out a better weapon than SHS. Now children and young people mustn't see anyone smoking! So  tobacco products are hidden behind secret doors in shops. And just to make sure people see traumatising illness porn pictures, they might also be in "plain" packaging in the UK as they are going to be in Australia.  Well – what an exciting naughtiness awaits our cheeeldren when they try out this forbidden fruit for themselves! Like having sex – but not – they know all about sex, it's lost its secret mystery – just copulation really. Innit? So smoking might be better than sex - I'll bet on it! They could collect the most physically violent illness porn pictures and swap with their friends for whole sets.They could take the dare.

This is a really tragic episode in our human history – the attempted eradication of the smoking habit in humans.I think it will be futile.

Yet, it has particularly emotionally injured people of my age – sixty plus – because we grew up when smoking was perfectly normal – most people did it. In my group no one had deformed babies through our smoking in pregnancy, our children suffered no allergies from our smoking in our homes – asthma and allergies were a rare thing that we read about in the paper, everyone seemed well, vital and optimistic for the future – life was exciting - the roaring sixties. And, strangely, those same people are burdening the population because we aint dead! Is that weird or what?

Perhaps, I have an extra rosy memory of that time, the music, the belief that we could change the world for the better, the “pill” and better circumstances for women, for gays, for black people, for everyone – and for health, from the wonderful new antibiotics which could cure almost anything at all. And we envisioned world peace. Wow. What an exciting world!

What the hell has happened?