Don’t worry, the nanny state will protect you

We all know how badly the state wants to control our lives, from deciding what we can and cannot eat to where we can and where we can’t light up a ciggie or vape.

Of course, they always make some ridiculous claim about it being for “public health” or to “protect the kiddies” as if saying that makes their state sponsored intervention into our private lives makes it alright. I got news for you, stay the hell out of my private life. It is mine to do with as I please and not the property of the State for you to control.

Of course, remember when the UK first enacted the smoke-free laws? It was only supposed to be where food was served, but look at it now. Any public place, and if ASH get their way it’ll soon be in ALL vehicles regardless of who is in them. I’m not even going to mention the attempts at “smoke free parks”, that’s just ludicrous. Oh wait, it was proposed wasn’t it? Of course, it was to “protect the kiddies” and to make smokers (and by extension vapers) role models for other people’s kids. No. Just no, I am not a role model for anyone else’s kids, and no I don’t have any of my own.  Whatever happened to just being able to enjoy yourself wherever you pleased?

Now of course with Ontario being stupid and bundling vaping up with smoking, Wales being just as bloody stupid claiming all sorts of rubbish “evidence” to support banning vaping in public places by combining it with the existing smoke free laws, which they’ve included a possible “extension” to outdoor places too. Now we have “studies”, and I’m going to use that term incredibly loosely, as we know it’s going to be based on some rather ludicrous premise and discount any actual research. These “studies” are claiming that parents who smoke at home don’t have smoke free rules.

Um what?

Let me get this straight, the World Lung Foundation wants smokers to smoke _outside their own homes? _Am I reading that right? Not content with banning smoking in bars, casinos, and all the other fun places to go they now want to suck the fun out of staying home too. Right.

Ah yes, it’s a “protect the children” mantra. Again. Look, I get it. The state wants healthy kids, think the same could be said of the parents, but this is going way too far.  The message this sends is that smokers make bad parents. It’s demonization of the highest order, or should that be lowest?

Ah here we go again. So we get more ridiculous media campaigns which have always proved so successful in the past haven’t they?

So the real problem isn’t the second-hand smoke, which we know has been over-hyped into the Darth Vader of tobacco control to try to scare everyone off the ciggies, it is the fact that people smoke at all that “concerns” them the most. Please, it’s a choice of the individual to smoke or not, not a choice for the State to make.

But of course it doesn’t stop there does it?

Let me see if I can get this right, there is currently an age restriction on tobacco pretty much everywhere. If you are over the age of 18 you can legally buy cigarettes or any other form of tobacco you wish. Most places would deem 18 to be the age of a young adult. Old enough to make decisions on their own. Old enough to join the bloody Army and get shot at. But you now can’t buy or smoke tobacco. Makes sense doesn’t it? Trouble is, there are those that still get hold of cigarettes, drugs and all kinds of “age restricted” products before “coming of age”, so the restrictions don’t really work do they?

Ah. If you get caught you get a fine. I suppose it is a way of dis-incentivising the younglings from getting their grubby little mitts on something that isn’t meant for them. All fine and dandy as they shouldn’t smoke anyway, but who will be enforcing these new restrictions? Guess that there’ll be a few more curtain-twitchers in Hawaii looking to rat on anyone under the age of 21. Wonder why this was proposed in the first place?

So because teenagers are experimenting with e-cigs, they have groundless fears that they’ll go on to smoke normal cigarettes, as in the gateway theory. Again. Thing is, the data from the CDC completely blows that theory to pieces.

Again, those in power are seeking to hold on to that power by using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. No evidence produced to date lends any credence to the gateway theory, and whilst teens shouldn’t be vaping anyway I’m quite happy to let them if it means they are not smoking tobacco. After all, they do ask if the juices these younglings vape contains nicotine don’t they? Pffft of course not, that would go against their agenda of vaping “being addictive” wouldn’t it?

The Farce is strong here.