What a drag it is getting cold

It’s the end of an era. The long farewell is done. The new dispensation is beginning to assert itself. There’s nothing we can do to stop it.

We never voted for this epoch-making change. We were never even consulted. Yet here we are facing up to the fact that from now on, our lives will change fundamentally.

Let’s face it, the ban on smoking in public places is going to be very hard to handle. As a non-smoking smoker, I find it particularly galling.

It’s three years ago this very month that I finally stubbed out my last fag, resorted to nicotine patches and finally went 24 hours, then another 24 hours, then a whole week, without a cigarette.

It was hell. It still is. The only reason I am not smoking now is that having endured three long years of misery it would be a pity to give up giving up now,

But just as an alcoholic is always an alcoholic, even if he hasn’t had a drink for a decade, I am and always will be a confirmed smoker. It’s just that I haven’t actually had a smoke today.

There are lots of people like me. Addicts who have kicked the habit but still miss the nicotine rush, the comforting habit, the taste, the chance it gives us to have something for our hands to do.

The smoking ban which comes into force on Sunday means I will never again be able to slip into a pub and enjoy the sights and smells of other people enjoying a drag.

All that clean air will ruin the atmosphere if many a cosy fug. All that healthy living will destroy the atmosphere, reduce the noise levels and take half the fun out of an evening down the boozer.

Of course it’s all for the best. The Government knows what’s best for us. The Government is right to vilify smokers and protect us from ourselves.

Smokers should not be allowed to cast their yellowing hazes into the atmosphere, polluting the lungs of innocent non-smokers whose health may be harmed.

Indeed, smokers should not be allowed to draw that yellowing muck into their own lungs either. They’ll only fall ill, cost the taxpayer a whole lot of money treating their self-inflicted diseases and then die young anyway.

It is difficult to make a convincing case against the smoking ban except to assert the dubious merits of personal liberty.

I end up saying I should be allowed to kill myself in my own way without the interference of the State.

The health police come back with statistics about how bad smoking is for the criminals themselves (that is, smokers), for their friends and family, for children and for the hard-pressed National Health Service.

This, though, is where the sums don’t really add up. The sums are simple. Smokers cost the NHS about £1.7 billion a year to treat. It’s a lot of money and a great deal of human suffering.

But the tax take from cigarettes and cigars (does anyone, anywhere smoke a pipe any more?) is a staggering £9.5 billion.

Smokers contribute a net £7.8 billion to the State. If they all gave up smoking tomorrow, the Chancellor would have to find the money somewhere else – putting up taxes on everyone.

And it may be a somewhat grizzly thought but if you have to look at it all in financial terms, the fact that smokers die younger is actually a benefit to the state because they cost less in pensions than longer-living non-smokers.

That’s hardly the point. The ban will lead to the further demise of the local – places which are not now, and never will be, in the dubious “gastro-pub” bracket.

(I’ve always been suspicious of somewhere which describes itself as a gastro-pub because, to me, the prefix “gastro” implies the stomach illness gastroenteritis, which I don’t think is what they have in mind when they are marketing their services).

Nobody – certainly no non-smoker – will have any sympathy for the oppressed minority which is being cornered by the moral majority and forced to cower on doorsteps in the rain.

It does create a camaraderie and a certain bloody-mindedness which the non-smoker will never appreciate. But it’s not the same as being able to sit at a table in a warm room and enjoy a quiet smoke. Yet this is another liberty we are losing.

When the Government banned fox hunting, people took to the streets in protest. Yet in the event the legislation didn’t make a blind bit of difference. Hunts are probably more popular and successful these days than they’ve been for decades.

Smokers, though, are to be hounded by the health and safety police. Indeed, we are being encouraged to shop one another to the authorities.

And all the non-smokers will stand on the sidelines applauding and telling us it’s all for our own good.

So what happens when they ban cars because they’re dangerous? Or fishing because it’s cruel? Or hang-gliding, ski-ing or even football because too many kids get injured and clog up accident and emergency wards?

Do we really want to be told what to do, no matter how good it is for you? I am sorely tempted to take up smoking again, in protest. Why can’t we learn to live and let die?