Doctors should lighten up over lighting up!

Nothing should surprise me these days when it comes to the harassment of the smoker after all, it has been going on for years.

The 2006 smoking ban remains an undemocratic piece of legislation that had at its core the criminalisation of those who lit up in a public place.

I believe the ban was a vindictive sanction implemented by non-smoking zealots who were more concerned with political point-scoring and headline-grabbing than the nation’s health.

But this week’s announcement by the holier-than-thou Febreze-smelling doctors of the British Medical Association that they intend lobbying for the introduction of a complete ban on smoking for all those born after 2000 had me spluttering ash and coffee all over my paper.

The BMA is raging that many still continue to puff away despite the many Draconian measures already in place. They believe that, if this is adopted as policy, Britain will be smoke-free by 2035.

Whoopee! Our kids won’t ever smoke because they won’t be able to buy fags! Their clothes, their homes, their kids won’t ever smell of stale ashtrays! And think of the health benefits golly gosh and spank me with a wet slipper!

No horrible cancers, no heart attacks, no coughing or strokes. And just think about the money saved on the NHS. What a fantastic idea! Meanwhile, back on planet Earth…

As laudable as this idea may at first sound the practicalities over its implementation and enforcement make it laughable.

Are they seriously suggesting that, by 2035, 35-year-olds will be asked for proof of age in order to buy cigarettes and criminalised if they smoke, and that all those born in 1999 or before won’t?

What will happen to those “oldies” who find their packets raided by 21st Century adults? Will they also be huckled by the all-seeing smoke police? It’s Big Brother gone mad.

With this measure implemented, will the temperance brigade come out bleating for similar restrictions on the sale of alcohol? No? Wake up and smell the coffee!

Actually don’t because that will also be banned given its caffeine content. As will sugary drinks and of course fatty foods.

Then there are those tangoed individuals who self-harm on a sunbed. What about dangerous sports? Driving? Rambling?

The list of potential bans is as long as it is ridiculous. It would lead to a two-tiered society the adults who are allowed and the adults who are not.

A ban on smoking based around what side of the millennium you popped out would lead to yet more erosions of our freedom and liberty. We’re supposed to live in one of the most tolerant nations on Earth, so what’s going on?

I have smoked for years. I wish I had never started and could give it up. I have tried every anti-smoking remedy available and yet still I continue to puff away.

It also guts me that one of my kids now smokes and I can only hope he has more willpower than me when he ever tries to quit.

However, the BMA should lighten up. Their latest intolerant wheeze is ill thought-out, simplistic, costly, divisive and yet another puerile attack on the smoker.

If they’re really serious, the answer is a complete ban and criminalisation, a stubbing out of those who make, import and sell the dreaded weed, and not the smoker.

Would they go down that road? Not a chance! What government in their right mind would give up the millions they make from the selling of cigarettes?

None that I can think of! But will this idiotic ban on smokers born in the 21st Century ever be introduced? Of course it will you can bet your last fag on that one!