I am the worst type of smoker: a reformed smoker who has come to loathe the product to which I was once addicted. So hearing that smoking is to be banned in cars where children are present cheered me up no end.
In an ideal world, smoking would be banned altogether, but this isn’t an ideal world and whilst if tobacco was invented today it would be banned. But the genie is well out of the bottle now.
They always say that giving up smoking is one of the hardest things to do but not for me. I found it easy, giving up many times before finally succeeding on 31 December 1993! I enjoyed smoking in the sense that I enjoyed the fix of another fag. So when people say, “I really enjoy smoking” we know why. Satisfying the craving for one of the most addictive drugs in the world is a great feeling, but son’t be fooled into believing it’s the mere act of smoking. “I need a cigarette in times of stress” is just the junkie fearing cold turkey.
Having lost everyone on my mother’s side to smoking-related diseases, I did what the smoker does when I smoked: I closed my mind to the slow suicide I was committing.
I now detest the smell of the cigarettes that used to poison me. It sets off my late onset asthma, it makes me feel sick.
And when I see adults smoking in the near presence of children, I know it could have been me, slightly opening the car window to let some of the carcinogens slip quietly away, I take to what I see as the moral high ground!
An argument put by opponents of banning smoking in cars is that it is unenforceable, but then many laws are unenforceable. In reality, only a small percentage of crimes are successfully resolved by the police. Perhaps as many murders are never solved, we might as well legalise it?
Anything to protect children will do for me. I never quite understand how people can say, ‘Second hand smoke is not as bad as cigarette smoke itself’ given that it’s exactly the same thing that gives people cancer, heart disease and all those other vile illnesses that come with the habit. And little lungs are growing lungs.
There is a libertarian argument too, which presumably runs that people should be allowed to inflict 300 carcinogens on their offspring should they choose to do and it’s not the state’s job to stop them doing it. I don’t like the idea of people harming and killing children so I’ll skip the libertarian argument this time.
