No Fire Without Smoke

 by Stoker

Photo by Chris Kofoed on Unsplash

The British generation now drawing its old age pensions differs markedly in at least one respect from Generation X or Z or Q, or whatever now supports the Green Party.  Us oldies spent most of our young lives smelling of slightly stale tobacco, with ash trays (occasionally even emptied) in every room of the house, and at every opportunity, flicking lighters for a quick draw.  And there were plenty of opportunities: in the lecture hall, on buses and trains, in aircraft (later, only in the back rows,) in cafes and restaurants before and after and even during a meal.  Best of all for us men, in clubs, offering the open packet and a light to pretty girls.

By the early 1960’s there was plenty of evidence coming out of the USA of a link between cigarette-smoking and cancer, especially lung cancer.  My aunt, a heavy smoker but also a rising star in the NHS, read this and eventually decided she should cease her habit; and instead took up smoking cigars; then when rumours about that practice started to percolate the medical journals, adopted instead a pipe.  She, it perhaps should be said, lived to be eighty-nine. 

But to smoke fags* was cool and sexy and rebellious and we all went on doing it – there would be plenty of time to give it up later.  This though was not the opinion of our political masters.  Who knows why they didn’t care for the smoke-filled rooms – historically the natural terrain of politicians – but part of it was doubtless the growing expense of the National Health Service, not least because of smoking- related illnesses, though another angle was more cynically the realisation that cigarettes were potentially a major source of tax revenue which could be both remunerative and enable the occupation of the moral high ground.  “We will help you give up this filthy and disgusting habit by making your fags less affordable.”  Like so many things that politicians do, this, of course, hit the simple pleasures of the poor rather than the easily affordable indulgences of the rich.

Did this work? A little; but tax-free cigarettes were easily available at international duty free, just as the cheap overseas holiday trade really got going. The smell and mess perhaps became more influential in restricting that lighting up habit, as hotels introduced no smoking rooms and restaurants asked patrons to refrain, at least inside.  Were we young folks worried by the health implications?  No, because we were young and healthy and would live for ever. 

I developed a stomach ulcer at the age of 27. The cause? Alcohol and tobacco and irregular eating, the surgeon told me at our last consultation.  “Now,” he said, “You can eat what you like, beer and wine and spirits will be fine, but, if you ever smoke one more cigarette, YOU WILL DIE!”. I staggered out to my girlfriend in our car in the hospital carpark, and repeated this to her. “Oh my God!” she said, lighting two Marlboro’s and passing one to me.

But what did for smoking really was simply fashion. It became unfashionable.  Stronger narcotics rather oddly did become fashionable and tolerated, whilst the number of places restricting tobacco grew.  When smoking inside was banned that kyboshed the habit for a lot of indulgents, especially in wet windy dismal Britain (the habit has lingered more determinedly in Mediterranean countries).  And the British government’s double whammy of taxing but not banning has certainly reduced smoking very markedly, though with the dismal side-effect that those most addicted spent more and more of their disposal income on filthy gaspers.  A packet of 20 Marlboro’s is around £19 now; and even the cheapest brands are about £14. It’s the same price for a single fag as my cohorts used to pay for a packet 45 years ago.

Do not think that your correspondent does not recognise what a seriously unpleasant habit smoking is. To declare an interest, that warning surgeon did work his trick on me. I pretty much gave up that day and have not touched one of the delicate but deadly white sticks since 2002; although the odd cigar slips through the net occasionally, and what pleasure it still gives. Two a year, perhaps; none this year so far. There is no real justification for smoking. The reek and mess and effect on others is horrid; the damage to health is undoubted. Like, I suspect, all our readers, I have too many friends whose lives were curtailed or rendered coughingly wheezingly unpleasant by this simple instrument. 

But human nature is very weird: most of us eat too much sugar: many drink too much alcohol: some of us drive our cars faster than is prudent; some take stimulants that do much harm and cause unpleasant behavioural changes.  We know these things are wrong; we still do them. It is perhaps odd that politicians have fixed on cigarettes as a particular evil – especially odd in the case of the Green Party which will continue to clamp down on cigarettes but allow free range in much stronger and more harmful drugs.  Let them explain that; I cannot.

But we may at last be at the beginning of a final decline in smoking cigarettes. One of the final acts of Rishi Sunak’s short Tory premiership was to propose and introduce legislation for an outright ban on the sale of cigarettes. This adopted a bizarrely obscure approach in that the legislation imposes an age limit on purchase; an approach which the current Labour government have continued. So, as from the beginning of May this year nobody under the age of 17 may buy any tobacco related products and each year the age limit will be raised by a year. So within about 90 years nobody will be allowed to buy tobacco products.  Hurrah!

Well maybe hurrah. What may actually happen is that using tobacco becomes a very secret vice, moving on from those illicit shared tabs behind the school bike shed to a system such as one might use, so I’ve heard, to obtain weed, coke, heroin, and other very nasty nasties from dubious types who drive limo’s with blacked out windows and deal in large amounts of cash. Us oldies, if of low moral character, may end up buying packets of twenty Benson and Hedges not for our own use but for younger acquaintances. Addiction is a strong driver and governments are good at driving things underground but not stamping them out.  If they really wanted to stamp out tobacco use they would just ban it. But being a bunch of cowards, unable to face losing the tax revenue (and indeed one or two senior politicos are rumoured to like a drag now and again) they have compromised any semblance of either sense or bravery.  As it is, fagging may once again become cool and rebellious. Doh!      

There is hypocrisy as well as stale fag smoke in the air.  If the population have been warned of the dangers, not allowed to indulge where they might harm others, and effectively pay the cost of their direct health care (as it appears they now do), why should they not smoke?  It’s a filthy habit, but so are many others and if it only damages the addict then why should they not puff away?  We live in an increasingly repressive society and to clamp down so hard, and yet so ineffectively, on the tobacco vice seems strangely confused. Anybody spare me a drag? 

*The editor apologises to US readers who may not be aware that to old Brits like Stoker a fag is simply a cigarette.