£10...A not-so-cheap price on freedom

As if the past year had not already bore enough bad news for smokers, it seems as though the pressure will continue to stub it out…for good.

According to the BBC, the Government Health Advisory has proposed a £10 licence for the future, that will be required if you wish to continue smoking.

Smokers will be forced to fill in long complicated forms and also have their photograph taken in order to prove they have paid their measly tenner, before buying their daily fix of fags.

As if cigarettes were not already expensive enough, perhaps the licences will indeed deter many from smoking, and with an alleged 70% of smokers apparently wanting to quit anyway, it would appear many would be in favour of the proposal.

This is not the case.

The freedom to choose has cropped up all over the papers and blogs of both smokers and non-smokers stating that although smokers may cost a huge amount to the NHS, they pay for it in the extortionate amount of tax paid.

The Daily Express ran the story and entitled it “Have You Had Enough Of Labour Dictating You?” and from the response and outcry from the story, I believe the answer of that question to be yes.

Simon Clarke , a spokesperson of Forest, an organisation dedicated to smoker’s rights said: “We are becoming not just a nanny state but a bully state. If smokers are targeted in this way it’s a very short step to slapping a similar charge on anyone who wants to buy alcohol or any other product ministers don’t approve of.”

Catherine Forsythe, of Dogreader, agrees with Forest and said: “It is part of the ‘Surveillance Society’. Human behaviour is tracked and recorded on a data base. The government will know if you are a smoker. It would not be difficult to log when you bought tobacco and how much you bought. It would all be useful information to the government, to insurers, to employers and a myriad of other officials.”

The Health Advisory Body’s Chairman, Professor Julian De Grand, has said that “the process should be made as irritatingly complex as possible in order to deter smokers from applying for their fix.”

This statement alone surely shows the underlying hatred towards smokers that remains in society, despite the government already winning one battle with the Smoking Ban in July of last year. Although to those who do not choose to be a smoker, the smoke from those who do, can be damaging to your health, sometimes nauseating or just plan unwanted. But does this mean that smokers should be treated as second class citizens?

The Eurosoc website shuns the proposal, and illustrates the extremity of it, calling it absurd. “Tobacco control! What next? Permits for drinkers? Shaggers? Lovers of fatty food? Holidaymakers?” And although an extreme statement in itself, the point itself remains valid. If a licence is permitted on smokers, then where can the line be drawn on future proposals? How far are we, as a society, willing to be controlled?

A Facebook group has emerged named “Can we find 1 MILLION people that DON'T want smoking back in pubs?” and perhaps there are a million Facebook users willing to join the group. However, the point to the group is unclear. Cigarettes are already banned in pubs and there is no current plans to reverse that. The group even suggests that the matter be taken even further, and smoking should be banned outside of buildings.

That doesn’t really leave many places does it?

If the proposal for a licecnce is agreed upon and put into force, it may mean a decrease in smokers which would certainly have a fantastic result as far as National Health is concerned, but it will most likely not be of their own will, which would be a sad day indeed for freedom of choice.