Yes of course it was his point. Anybody who actually researches the cigarette-hoarding of Helmut Schmidt knows exactly why he is using the words he uses. I was going to commend that hilarious example of understated irony (or even bathos), and then, as I knew I would, I came across someone who took those carefully exaggerated words at utter face value. Sheesh, what have we come to.
Err… the irony in this case is the author’s irony doesn’t work. People generally are smoking far less, unlike cannabis and cocaine where year on year they are using it far more. So it is a fail to attempt a mirrored ironic sentiment between something that is increasingly popular (illegal or not) and something that is declining drastically. If he had used vapes instead the irony would have worked.
Last edited 6 months ago by Alex Colchester
Amy Cools
6 months ago
Cannabis has been ‘eradicated’? That’s very funny. Does the writer get out much? As the Prohibition era of the 1920s and early 30s in my native United States showed, when you make the sale of something that so many people desire and enjoy illegal, all you do is hand over the selling of the good from law-abiding, reasonably legislated merchants to criminal, violent ones. You do not stop sales. Cannabis is readily available in this country – the trade has just been driven underground, but not very deep underground.
That may well be – but as with most wars on drugs and other goods, the harms of prohibition tend to outweigh the benefits. Once cannabis became illegal and the laws strictly enforced, cannabis largely went from a very mild drug to one that’s been selectively bred to become incredibly, sometimes dangerously potent, because the trade, still thriving, was completely unregulated since, of course, it’s illegal. And, murderous cartels supply so much of it. The net harm is clear.
Banning cigarettes is similarly stupid. There’s a huge black market in them already here because they’re so heavily taxed, as a civil servant I know tells me. You’ll just see more people dealing and buying strong, cheap, unregulated cigarettes, and like so many other banned substances, often, unknown to the purchaser, laced with drugs to make them even more addictive. I’ve also talked to many people who buy large quantities of tobacco cheaply when on holiday in Europe and bring it back with them.
Britain took the right approach with vaping, rightly seeing it as harm reduction because in the real world, harm elimination is impossible. (My native country, the US, took a hardline, puritanical approach and – surprise, surprise! – young people started buying illicit vaping products with all kinds of poisonous stuff added, in many cases killing them.) Britain should take the same approach to cigarettes and tobacco. Regulate the harmful additives in tobacco but keep it fully legal.
The strength issue is grealy overstated – as with everything else in life, people simply use less, or more according to strength and taste – e.g. in the past ‘pure grass reefers’, and other large quantity vehicles were common, now not so much, it’s pipes with small nuggets, or edibles. Secondly, in the UK & Europe at least, hashish was the norm since the 1960s – a concentrated product, stronger than the modern grass of today, which has largely replaced it in recent years.
Buit simplistic. The number who have tried cannnabis has gone way up, whilst regular users have fallen in number. Seizures of cannabis from smuggling (and I believe the authorities enforce the laws here as much as they ever did, austerity permitting) have yo-yo’d but showing no particular overall trend.
Most people don’t like it – it’s a difficult drug in some ways, can make you feel anxious, self conscious. The amount of alcohol consumption, a much more dangerous drug has fallen, especially amongst young people – it may be that there is a switch.
Also, people are noticing cannabis use much more often because it is open – whereas it used to happen behind absolutely only behind close doors and maybe at some festivals.
Richard Craven
6 months ago
“Policy to be announced this week in the King’s Speech will eradicate tobacco from our society as surely and comprehensively as cannabis and cocaine have been.”
You effing what?!?
Not urgent, not important. What else could possibly be done?
Martin Butler
6 months ago
Interesting how when the smoking restrictions came in during the Blair years it was a bit like ULEZ now. The Daily Mail libertarians going on about government overreach and nanny states. Does anyone now think we ought to go back to unrestricted smoking? – don’t think so. But Sunak won’t grasp the real health epidemic facing this country- that is obesity. The junk food lobby, which makes a fortune from our appalling diets, will ensure there is no government action there.
Yes that is the standard, and understandable response. But I’m sure you’ve seen film clips of people in the streets of London or US cities in the 1930s. You can’t help noticing that there are next to no fat people. This invites an interesting question. Were people then just making more intelligent food choices? Were they just more health conscious in those days? I don’t think so. And if you magically transported all those people to now, would they get fat. Yes, many probably would. Think this thought experiment tells us it real isn’t about individual responsibility- that’s just an easy get out. People eat the stuff that is normal in that culture- just like smoking used to be normal. The only body that can change norms are governments. (Wearing seat belts – is another example.) Food companies, like tobacco companies, don’t care a jot about the overall health of a country- they care only about the bottom line.
Yes, I was aware that I’d oversimplified in writing that. It’s not only down to personal responsibility – things like mental wellbeing and social influences also influence people’s decisions. It’s easier for healthy, well off people to make good choices (even if we have the same choices).
But I’d rather have society set better examples than restrict choice through legislation and taxes. Individuals and local groups can provide leadership and examples.
We’ll yes both are important. But personally I’m not against a bit of nannying. Remember that in the past there were never the options that are available now. Ordinary people are just no match for the sophisticated psychology of the big corporations through advertising and social media. I know I go against the grain on UnHerd but I want more restrictions on corporate power.
It took a lot to get fat in the 30’s, largely because you didn’t have the sugary processed foods.
When all that’s in the shops to buy is meat and veg you have to eat colossal amounts to get fat, especially as jobs and life in general was much more physical.
I don’t think it’s that people were more cautious with their food choices, it’s just that the bad (and often tasty) choices weren’t available
I mean it’s the definition of a nanny state. Yes, I think it should be up to the individual, it isn’t the place of the state to tell adults that they can’t smoke.
On your logic there should be no smoking restrictions, no restrictions on drugs, in fact no restrictions on anything. Just basic laws. That’s most people’s idea of hell. Extreme libertarianism is, like communism, just a rather silly abstract theory.
Tony Taylor
6 months ago
If I could have one ciggy a day, and it tasted as good as it did when I started in 1976, I would. But I can’t, and it doesn’t, so I don’t.
Cigarettes tasted good to you when you started – really? Surely they start out disgusting, but people plough on through to get to the addiction , aaahhh stage.
I loved my first drag. A Marly Red at the Park Royal in Carlton. As I got older, probably through guilt, the gaspers tasted progressively worse.
Lindsay S
6 months ago
We’ve just switched cigarettes for vapes. Same drug just a different delivery system. When I hear people say “I’m not a smoker” whilst puffing on their vape, I think to myself that a smackhead is still smackhead whether or not he smokes it or injects it. You haven’t quit until you’re no longer consuming nicotine.
Maybe but hardly anyone smokes now whereas when I was a kid in the 70s almost everyone smoked, everywhere, all the time.
Even people who said they didn’t ‘smoke’ often smoked cigars!
One of the reasons I think I eventually took it up myself was because I grew up in a fug of the adults’ fag smoke.
I think I was ‘primed’ in this way before I even started.
I quit nearly ten years ago and am very glad I managed to, although it took about 7 attempts.
And now it’s the same thing with vaping. The only thing to change is the delivery system. Now it smells and tastes nicer and comes in much stronger doses!
Which is why we need to keep the kids off of them. There is also a pernicious idea that they are a valid substitute for cigarettes. Maybe in the short term.
Paul Johnston
6 months ago
“Once the principle of prohibition is established it becomes easier to administer….” That word Prohibition should ring bells among the historically literate . The American attempt at prohibition of alcohol, for the best possible of reasons no doubt, was the biggest bonanza for organised crime possibly in human history. It opened to it access to funds unimaginable beforehand, enabling the corruption of society and establishment of gangs from which American society has arguably never fully recovered, even though that “easy to administer” policy was abandoned by Roosevelt 90 years ago. I just celebrated the 40th anniversary of giving up.smoking myself, but I urge government to look at the history of prohibition before embarking on a policy that closely resembles it.
Yes can’t just prohibit something that is culturally embedded, of course. But you certainly can help something along when a culture is moving in that direction anyway, and the public can see the point.
Andrew Stuart
6 months ago
I can remember smoking on long haul flights. The back rows were reserved for us. Kids these days will never know how good we had it 😉
Colorado UnHerd
6 months ago
“Admittedly, the suppression of tobacco was greatly aided by an increased understanding of secondary smoking ..”
I think the author too belatedly, lightly and briefly dismisses this aspect of smoking, which does not apply to other enjoyable self-harms, including alcohol and sugar. Many people rail at infringements on adult bodily autonomy — including this right to self-harm — but draw a line at harming others. The detriments of secondhand smoke — including to fetuses and young children, who cannot remove themselves from their environments — are long- and well-established. Other vices that physically harm only adult users are far less likely to incur prohibition, especially in capitalist economies in which they generate great profit.
No. The suppression of tobacco was greatly aided by a load of fiddled data on secondary smoking.
The effects of secondary smoking on health are negligible. That’s not to say that secondary smoke isn’t annoying. But it isn’t a health hazard in any way.
Similarly, Ansel Keys fiddled his figures on cholesterol and heart disease. There’s no link. It’s all a lie.
I suggest you look at the well-documented negative effects of maternal smoking on fetuses. They are legion; here’s a more recent study: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-022-02507-w
with an excerpt:
“An umbrella review showed that (maternal smoking during pregnancy) is associated with increased risks of 20 infant-related and seven mother-related health conditions [1]. Most of these association are very likely to be causal and some can have long-term impacts across different phases of life from perinatal to adulthood. MSDP is associated with 3-fold increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome, 2-fold increased risk of asthma, and 1.5-fold increased risk of low birth weight, stillbirth, and obesity in the offspring.”
Ample studies demonstrate the hazards of inhaling others’ tobacco smoke. According to the American Cancer Society, this “sidestream smoke” contains higher concentrations of nicotine and carcinogenic agents than that inhaled by the smoker.
Perhaps you will share the research that causes you to dismiss the danger of secondhand smoke as “a lie.”
I’ll take the fun this writer had at the expense of finger wagging naysayers who would deny a poor bloke a puff with his pint. It’s the “do your own thing” crowd wagging its finger at those who “do their own thing.” The rank hypocrisy of liberalism. Oh what a joy it is to laugh at all this. It’s just the right medicine. Thank you, sir, for this piece. And please, keep them coming.
Ida March
6 months ago
Bring on the black market in tobacco.
Simon Neale
6 months ago
“The chief cause of unfitness was proved to be smoking,” declared Percy Everett, a magazine editor who later co-wrote Scouting for Boys with Boer War hero Robert Baden-Powell.
Ironic that they have nearly succeeded in driving smoking from polite society, while scouting for boys was elevated into being stunning and brave.
anthony henderson
6 months ago
The way things are going smoking may make a big comeback.
Right-Wing Hippie
6 months ago
Time to take up buttlegging. I wonder where I can buy a transatlantic-worthy ship with a large cargo hold.
Alan Thorpe
6 months ago
I have never smoked but I don’t agree with a complete ban. If people want to smoke at home or if pubs want to allow smoking and they have enough customers who want that environment and staff willing to work in it I do not see a problem. It might be related to the health care so stop free health care and make people pay for they unhealthy lifestyles and that extends beyond smoking.
“make people pay for they unhealthy lifestyles”
Oh, in the case of smoking they already do – ‘in spades’. £7 duty on every pack, and then 10 years retirement age lost. If the government were truly cynical they’d be begging us to smoke up.
Bryan Dale
6 months ago
Legal or not, a smoking ban will soon bring submachine guns back into fashion as they were during the American prohibition of alcohol.
Wow, I could use a cigarette right now. I just read something that Diane Abbott said that I agree with.
I think it’s a stretch to say that cannabis and cocaine have been “eradicated from society”. Neither seems particularly hard to come by in the UK.
I think that was his point…
And will soon be legalised
Yes of course it was his point. Anybody who actually researches the cigarette-hoarding of Helmut Schmidt knows exactly why he is using the words he uses. I was going to commend that hilarious example of understated irony (or even bathos), and then, as I knew I would, I came across someone who took those carefully exaggerated words at utter face value. Sheesh, what have we come to.
Err… the irony in this case is the author’s irony doesn’t work. People generally are smoking far less, unlike cannabis and cocaine where year on year they are using it far more. So it is a fail to attempt a mirrored ironic sentiment between something that is increasingly popular (illegal or not) and something that is declining drastically. If he had used vapes instead the irony would have worked.
Cannabis has been ‘eradicated’? That’s very funny. Does the writer get out much? As the Prohibition era of the 1920s and early 30s in my native United States showed, when you make the sale of something that so many people desire and enjoy illegal, all you do is hand over the selling of the good from law-abiding, reasonably legislated merchants to criminal, violent ones. You do not stop sales. Cannabis is readily available in this country – the trade has just been driven underground, but not very deep underground.
There was a great deal less of it about when the police actually enforced the law against it.
That may well be – but as with most wars on drugs and other goods, the harms of prohibition tend to outweigh the benefits. Once cannabis became illegal and the laws strictly enforced, cannabis largely went from a very mild drug to one that’s been selectively bred to become incredibly, sometimes dangerously potent, because the trade, still thriving, was completely unregulated since, of course, it’s illegal. And, murderous cartels supply so much of it. The net harm is clear.
Banning cigarettes is similarly stupid. There’s a huge black market in them already here because they’re so heavily taxed, as a civil servant I know tells me. You’ll just see more people dealing and buying strong, cheap, unregulated cigarettes, and like so many other banned substances, often, unknown to the purchaser, laced with drugs to make them even more addictive. I’ve also talked to many people who buy large quantities of tobacco cheaply when on holiday in Europe and bring it back with them.
Britain took the right approach with vaping, rightly seeing it as harm reduction because in the real world, harm elimination is impossible. (My native country, the US, took a hardline, puritanical approach and – surprise, surprise! – young people started buying illicit vaping products with all kinds of poisonous stuff added, in many cases killing them.) Britain should take the same approach to cigarettes and tobacco. Regulate the harmful additives in tobacco but keep it fully legal.
The strength issue is grealy overstated – as with everything else in life, people simply use less, or more according to strength and taste – e.g. in the past ‘pure grass reefers’, and other large quantity vehicles were common, now not so much, it’s pipes with small nuggets, or edibles. Secondly, in the UK & Europe at least, hashish was the norm since the 1960s – a concentrated product, stronger than the modern grass of today, which has largely replaced it in recent years.
Buit simplistic. The number who have tried cannnabis has gone way up, whilst regular users have fallen in number. Seizures of cannabis from smuggling (and I believe the authorities enforce the laws here as much as they ever did, austerity permitting) have yo-yo’d but showing no particular overall trend.
Most people don’t like it – it’s a difficult drug in some ways, can make you feel anxious, self conscious. The amount of alcohol consumption, a much more dangerous drug has fallen, especially amongst young people – it may be that there is a switch.
Also, people are noticing cannabis use much more often because it is open – whereas it used to happen behind absolutely only behind close doors and maybe at some festivals.
“Policy to be announced this week in the King’s Speech will eradicate tobacco from our society as surely and comprehensively as cannabis and cocaine have been.”
You effing what?!?
Well said, Richard 🙂
You are hereby appointed WOKEFINDER GENERAL.
Congratulations!
Craven R? Craven A.
Not urgent, not important. What else could possibly be done?
Interesting how when the smoking restrictions came in during the Blair years it was a bit like ULEZ now. The Daily Mail libertarians going on about government overreach and nanny states. Does anyone now think we ought to go back to unrestricted smoking? – don’t think so. But Sunak won’t grasp the real health epidemic facing this country- that is obesity. The junk food lobby, which makes a fortune from our appalling diets, will ensure there is no government action there.
Excellent point. And perhaps some people moved on from smoking to food. But people aren’t forced to eat unhealthy food or not exercise enough.
Yes that is the standard, and understandable response. But I’m sure you’ve seen film clips of people in the streets of London or US cities in the 1930s. You can’t help noticing that there are next to no fat people. This invites an interesting question. Were people then just making more intelligent food choices? Were they just more health conscious in those days? I don’t think so. And if you magically transported all those people to now, would they get fat. Yes, many probably would. Think this thought experiment tells us it real isn’t about individual responsibility- that’s just an easy get out. People eat the stuff that is normal in that culture- just like smoking used to be normal. The only body that can change norms are governments. (Wearing seat belts – is another example.) Food companies, like tobacco companies, don’t care a jot about the overall health of a country- they care only about the bottom line.
Yes, I was aware that I’d oversimplified in writing that. It’s not only down to personal responsibility – things like mental wellbeing and social influences also influence people’s decisions. It’s easier for healthy, well off people to make good choices (even if we have the same choices).
But I’d rather have society set better examples than restrict choice through legislation and taxes. Individuals and local groups can provide leadership and examples.
We’ll yes both are important. But personally I’m not against a bit of nannying. Remember that in the past there were never the options that are available now. Ordinary people are just no match for the sophisticated psychology of the big corporations through advertising and social media. I know I go against the grain on UnHerd but I want more restrictions on corporate power.
It took a lot to get fat in the 30’s, largely because you didn’t have the sugary processed foods.
When all that’s in the shops to buy is meat and veg you have to eat colossal amounts to get fat, especially as jobs and life in general was much more physical.
I don’t think it’s that people were more cautious with their food choices, it’s just that the bad (and often tasty) choices weren’t available
I mean it’s the definition of a nanny state. Yes, I think it should be up to the individual, it isn’t the place of the state to tell adults that they can’t smoke.
On your logic there should be no smoking restrictions, no restrictions on drugs, in fact no restrictions on anything. Just basic laws. That’s most people’s idea of hell. Extreme libertarianism is, like communism, just a rather silly abstract theory.
If I could have one ciggy a day, and it tasted as good as it did when I started in 1976, I would. But I can’t, and it doesn’t, so I don’t.
Cigarettes tasted good to you when you started – really? Surely they start out disgusting, but people plough on through to get to the addiction , aaahhh stage.
I was addicted from my first drag of a Marly Red.
I guess you were used to smoke already, pre-fumigated?
I loved my first drag. A Marly Red at the Park Royal in Carlton. As I got older, probably through guilt, the gaspers tasted progressively worse.
We’ve just switched cigarettes for vapes. Same drug just a different delivery system. When I hear people say “I’m not a smoker” whilst puffing on their vape, I think to myself that a smackhead is still smackhead whether or not he smokes it or injects it. You haven’t quit until you’re no longer consuming nicotine.
“Smoking” implies “inhaling smoke”. That is not what you do when you vape.
i was a smoker for 20 years, I did it because I became addicted to nicotine. I didn’t sit by open fires trying to inhale lungfuls of smoke.
Maybe but hardly anyone smokes now whereas when I was a kid in the 70s almost everyone smoked, everywhere, all the time.
Even people who said they didn’t ‘smoke’ often smoked cigars!
One of the reasons I think I eventually took it up myself was because I grew up in a fug of the adults’ fag smoke.
I think I was ‘primed’ in this way before I even started.
I quit nearly ten years ago and am very glad I managed to, although it took about 7 attempts.
And now it’s the same thing with vaping. The only thing to change is the delivery system. Now it smells and tastes nicer and comes in much stronger doses!
Which is why we need to keep the kids off of them. There is also a pernicious idea that they are a valid substitute for cigarettes. Maybe in the short term.
“Once the principle of prohibition is established it becomes easier to administer….” That word Prohibition should ring bells among the historically literate . The American attempt at prohibition of alcohol, for the best possible of reasons no doubt, was the biggest bonanza for organised crime possibly in human history. It opened to it access to funds unimaginable beforehand, enabling the corruption of society and establishment of gangs from which American society has arguably never fully recovered, even though that “easy to administer” policy was abandoned by Roosevelt 90 years ago. I just celebrated the 40th anniversary of giving up.smoking myself, but I urge government to look at the history of prohibition before embarking on a policy that closely resembles it.
Yes can’t just prohibit something that is culturally embedded, of course. But you certainly can help something along when a culture is moving in that direction anyway, and the public can see the point.
I can remember smoking on long haul flights. The back rows were reserved for us. Kids these days will never know how good we had it 😉
“Admittedly, the suppression of tobacco was greatly aided by an increased understanding of secondary smoking ..”
I think the author too belatedly, lightly and briefly dismisses this aspect of smoking, which does not apply to other enjoyable self-harms, including alcohol and sugar. Many people rail at infringements on adult bodily autonomy — including this right to self-harm — but draw a line at harming others. The detriments of secondhand smoke — including to fetuses and young children, who cannot remove themselves from their environments — are long- and well-established. Other vices that physically harm only adult users are far less likely to incur prohibition, especially in capitalist economies in which they generate great profit.
No. The suppression of tobacco was greatly aided by a load of fiddled data on secondary smoking.
The effects of secondary smoking on health are negligible. That’s not to say that secondary smoke isn’t annoying. But it isn’t a health hazard in any way.
Similarly, Ansel Keys fiddled his figures on cholesterol and heart disease. There’s no link. It’s all a lie.
I suggest you look at the well-documented negative effects of maternal smoking on fetuses. They are legion; here’s a more recent study:
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-022-02507-w
with an excerpt:
“An umbrella review showed that (maternal smoking during pregnancy) is associated with increased risks of 20 infant-related and seven mother-related health conditions [1]. Most of these association are very likely to be causal and some can have long-term impacts across different phases of life from perinatal to adulthood. MSDP is associated with 3-fold increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome, 2-fold increased risk of asthma, and 1.5-fold increased risk of low birth weight, stillbirth, and obesity in the offspring.”
Ample studies demonstrate the hazards of inhaling others’ tobacco smoke. According to the American Cancer Society, this “sidestream smoke” contains higher concentrations of nicotine and carcinogenic agents than that inhaled by the smoker.
Perhaps you will share the research that causes you to dismiss the danger of secondhand smoke as “a lie.”
I’ll take the fun this writer had at the expense of finger wagging naysayers who would deny a poor bloke a puff with his pint. It’s the “do your own thing” crowd wagging its finger at those who “do their own thing.” The rank hypocrisy of liberalism. Oh what a joy it is to laugh at all this. It’s just the right medicine. Thank you, sir, for this piece. And please, keep them coming.
Bring on the black market in tobacco.
Ironic that they have nearly succeeded in driving smoking from polite society, while scouting for boys was elevated into being stunning and brave.
The way things are going smoking may make a big comeback.
Time to take up buttlegging. I wonder where I can buy a transatlantic-worthy ship with a large cargo hold.
I have never smoked but I don’t agree with a complete ban. If people want to smoke at home or if pubs want to allow smoking and they have enough customers who want that environment and staff willing to work in it I do not see a problem. It might be related to the health care so stop free health care and make people pay for they unhealthy lifestyles and that extends beyond smoking.
“make people pay for they unhealthy lifestyles”
Oh, in the case of smoking they already do – ‘in spades’. £7 duty on every pack, and then 10 years retirement age lost. If the government were truly cynical they’d be begging us to smoke up.
Legal or not, a smoking ban will soon bring submachine guns back into fashion as they were during the American prohibition of alcohol.
History shows that people won’t give up their booze – this lesson almost certainly does not extend to tobacco, for self-evident reasons.