Lay off victims of the evil weed

Dec 24 2009 By The Stirrer

I HAVEN’T touched a cigarette since lighting up behind the bike sheds at Kings Norton Boys’ School sometime in the late 1970s.

After wheezing my way through pre-season football training, I realised that a few weeks of experimental puffing had already started to interfere with my limited athletic prowess and decided to quit there and then.

In the years that have followed, I’ve never been drawn back to the evil weed.

Lucky me. Nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs known to man and the health prospects for long-term smokers is poor.

Strange, then, that the Government helps itself to tax revenues of about £7 billion a year from the tobacco industry, while at the same pursuing a vicious vendetta against those who can’t resist its lung rotting temptations.

As if to prove how ruthless this witch-hunt is, a truck driver called my radio show the other night to tell me how he’d been convicted of smoking alone in his cab during a rest break in a picnic area.

He was sacked on the spot and fined £1,200.

It’s illegal, apparently, to have so much as a drag on a fag if your work area is shared by another employee, even if your colleague isn’t there at the time.

The fact that another member of staff might get into the cab a few hours later is sufficient to make you a criminal.

Other truckers rang in to confirm the existence of these draconian laws.

I recognise that entering a confined area used by a heavy smoker might be unpleasant, but so far as I’m aware, no one has yet died from inhaling a bad smell.

If that were the case, passing wind would also be illegal (damn, there I go again, giving them ideas).

A quick spray of air freshener or winding down the windows usually does the trick – it doesn’t need the sledgehammer of the law.

Smokers have already been driven out of pubs, and as a result the great British boozer is dying.

Now it seems they can’t indulge their habit at work either.

No wonder so many people feel the Government is determined to squeeze the pleasures of the ordinary working man – at the same time as hypocritically milking his vices for all they are worth.

It’s time to play fair. Politicians should either have the courage of their convictions and ban smoking altogether – or finally recognise the rights of those who through no fault of their own have become as hopelessly addicted as any dope fiend or junkie.