Morning:
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The Government's drives towards a smoke-free Britain have been followed by me with everclose attention, and I've said it here before but I'll say it again: I don't have any real objection to the ban on smoking in enclosed public places. Once the majority of the adult population no longer smoked it was a fait accompli waiting to happen. I quite appreciate than non and ex-smokers have no desire to sit around - let alone work - in the stench of my pleasure.
But now we have Dawn Primarolo, the Minister for Public Health, going further. A consultation is to be launched this spring concerning the banning of the public display of tobacco products by retailers, and the removal of cigarette vending machines from pubs, restaurants and clubs. If it goes according to plan, legislation will be introduced in the autumn. The minister says: "It is vital we get across to children the message that smoking is bad. Children who smoke are putting their lives at risk and are more likely to die of cancer than people who start smoking later."
It's not a contentious statement - I agree with it - but I'm not sure mucking around with sumptuary law is the way to achieve this. I began smoking at 12, and what attracted me was adults who looked cool doing it - not other kids, not the racks of cigarette packs in the local shop. When I smoked I thought I was Humphrey Bogart or James Dean. It follows that the best way to prevent young people getting addicted is to curb the number of older smokers.
The Government is already doing well on this, with another two per cent fewer smokers since the introduction of the ban last year. It has also raised the legal age for buying cigarettes to 18 - again, this is fair enough. All in all, the change since the press and billboard advertising was done away with in 2003 has been considerable; only 22 per cent of British adults now smoke. But the Government wants fewer smokers still: it has pledged to get the total down to 21 per cent by 2010, a target that's eminently achievable.
And this, I think, is one of the reasons it is going for the retail display ban: unlike a myriad other targets, from hospital waiting lists to carbon emissions to Gordon Brown's "golden rule" on government borrowing, this is one it can hit - and one that has a broad consensus behind it. As politics go, this is as easy as emptying an ashtray.
But won't putting cigarettes under the counter be a step too far? One thing kids hate more than anything is the hypocrisy of the adult world, and surely plenty of them will pick up on this incongruity: here's one intoxicant being treated like a dangerous drug, while there's another, arguably far more dangerous one, openly on sale in every corner shop in the land. After all, no one ever beat up his wife after smoking a cigarette, or crashed a car, or took "no" to mean "I'm gagging for it".
Societies that rely on such a skewed morality never succeed in persuading children to do anything much. In the Fifties it was contraceptives and pornography that were sold under the counter - and we know what the reaction to that has been. Take my advice, Dawn, if you put fags under there now, in a generation's time we'll have a nicotine revolution staining our hands.
