"There is nothing evil about smoking as long as you are just hurting yourself"

Funnily enough that's exactly what the 7 year long 12 nation study into the effects of 'second hand' smoke undertaken by the WHO embarrassingly revealed, turns out we really are just hurting ourselves, you might object to the smell just like I object to your BO or veggie breath but that's all it is, a very subjective annoyance.

But why rely on science when old wives tales are good enough?

Ban everything, barcode everyone, nothing could ever be safe enough for us children of the State.

Ok, first point, £200 to acquire a license that allows people to smoke? Can anyone say "Stealth Tax"?

Now, second point. If the government (lower case g...) wants people to stop smoking, really stop smoking based on the health of the nation...stop selling cigarettes. Truly, it's the only way.

Right, that's my two pennies worth.

PS,

Where is the Paris Hilton angle?

Can El Reg see to adding another icon, maybe a 2p coin?

I don't even know where to begin with this one. Well done to El Reg for showing restraint in not wasting loads of bandwidth ripping this nonsense apart right now!

Are you kidding me..?? HOW ABOUT YOU FUCK OFF YOU CHUUUUUUUUUUUUUNT..!!

Sorry about that folks, I'm going to pop outside for a ciggie, brb...

.....just think if it wasn't for them you would probably have to employ twice as many staff just to make up lots of barmy stuff to fill bootnotes

Give us some pubs where we smoke our lungs black then. Put big signs outside warning that this is a dedicated smoking pub.

As long as it comes with a licence to break government advisers kneecaps too!

And then what else will this be considered acceptable for?. Will everyone who wants to drink more than 8 pints a week have to attend alcohol abuse workshops? How about attaching a pedometer to everyone to ensure you walk 2000 steps a day (or whatever is recommended). Yes smoking is stupid, and I certainly agree that nobody else be subject to something harmful, and therefore agree with the ban in public. As many people do, I smoke socially, while having possibly a beer or 2 more than I should, after working 80hours in front of a computer. Yet I have the sense to eat well, keep fit and pay all those taxes. I also have to take daily meds for epilepsy and get regular check-ups to ensure I'm not caving in from the inside, but I still don't see why I should have to endure a process such as this.

..f*ck right off with that one. There's no way on God's green Earth I'm going to pay for a fookin' smoking licence. I'll sit outside Downing Street chucking fag ends at Gordon Brown's coppers all day and all night if I have to, but no-one is taking away my right to smoke Lucky Strike/Winston/Chesterfield as often as I want to. Fookin' Labour Stalinist police-state nanny-knows-best interfering busybodies.

Any non smokers might, whilst curling on their settee of smugness with a glass of wine might like to consider that alchohol is a greater killer than smoking,

how long before you need a licence to drink ?

After we all stop smoking what are the guvnermont going to focus on next... hic

As for drink not harming anyone second hand, take a leisurely walk through a main street of any uk city at chicking out time.... you don;t see smokers battling with the hugely expensive police presence and bottling innocent passers by

harumph :-)

I am a smoker. I am doing my bit to reduce the appalling strain on the NHS all the people my age who do not smoke will be placing on it by surviving to 123.

Accordingly, I fully anticipate being less of a burden on the national purse.

I claim my Dying At A Proper Age Rebate

(form DoH/Lun/001(c)-7i/reb/9j_smo\2(reb) refers, I think)

I think this illustrates a fundamental flaw of government; it encourages and attracts the kind of people who don't know when to stop governing.

I choose Paris Hilton as my avatar. She is an expert on smoking. Also, I am reminded of that film where the lady smokes a cigarette with her bottom.

Psst, it would work just about as well as prohibition stopped Americans from drinking.

I'm a non smoker, and I'm delighted that smokers contribute so much money to the national coffers - especially now that pubs/clubs are smoke free so smoking doesn't really affect me at all.

There is an absolute deluge of information on the risks, and help for those who start and struggle to stop. The only downside I can think of at all is that it costs the NHS money to treat millions with lung cancer, but that is more than covered by the tax.

If you want to pay the country for the privilege of killing yourself, go right for it.

Le Grand clearly has nothing but contempt for the general public. He claims that he wants the healthy option to be the default in policy and this licence along with his other ideas would allow the public to "opt-in" to the unhealthy option.

Until this arsehole can show me a child whose first words are "I need a cigarette," we already have an opt-in culture. I opt-in every time I buy a pack of tobacco.

I'll decide whether or not i want to take risks myself, not have you decide to do it for me.

What next, a licence to cross the road away from a pedestrian crossing?, a licence to eat boiled sweets the same size as my throat, a licence to re-wire my house without turning the mains off first?

Give me a break!

//Will everyone who wants to drink more than 8 pints a week have to attend alcohol abuse workshops?//

They existed years ago in Finland when one bought over a certain amount of drink, they received infomation (whether they liked it or not) on the dangerous of drinking to excess.

I think it is a good idea on the licensing front, smoking-related diseases kills in the UK, 100 000 people. Now if that be put down by as many as a quarter, that is the size of a small market town.

But if this even came close to happening I would start again, buy a gun and take out as many government types as I could get my sights on.

I've been threatening to do this for a quite a while now, and I'm afraid this is the last straw. On the day this law passes I will pack up my things, make my arrangements with work, and emigrate to Canada.

This is yet another pointless attack on our civil liberties, based on nothing but Labours seemingly unquenchable thirst to ban things.

Cast your mind over the past years, how many seemingly insignificant things have been banned.

Read Jeremy Clarkson's new book, he makes this point excellenty, and has some rather frightening facts and figures to back it up. However, I cannot be bothered to reproduce them here, you'll have to shell out the £7.99.

Labour beware: This country has a breaking point.

Keep outlawing things that are minority persuits (Smoking, Hunting with dogs, Certain psychoactive fungi are the ones I can think of off the top of my head) and eventually you'll only end up with an angry majority.

People will become accustomed to breaking the law, and as a result we'll have more people being dragged through the courts at the tax payers expense.

The respect the avarage person has for the law with drop, breaking the law will become a socially acceptable thing, and why respect one law, when you don't respect another.

We'll end up with gangs on hoodies skulking our streets at night. Oh, wait, thats happened.

We won't be able to go a month without hearing about somebody under the age of 18 stabbing/being stabbed on their street in the inner cities. Hang on a moment, we're already there.

We need to get back to basics, if its not hurting anybody else, then why ban it?

Let teachers actually punish children, rather then making them watch as their class grows up with no discipline. Then asking why the youth of today is too busy shooting smack and rival gang members to get a job.

How about we all practice the old adage of "live and let live"? You do what you want to do and I'll do what I want to do, and as long as no person is harming anyone other than themselves, all is good. (smoking should still be banned in restaurants and other similar public places) And don't bitch about the rising health costs that everyone has to carry so a few can smoke---might as well ban every slightly dangerous activity then, from skydiving to overeating. (and for the record, I don't smoke)

One more thing before I go.

You'd have thought with the inevitable upcoming pension fuck up (and it is inevitable), that the Govenment wouldn't want to promote good health too much. People might actually listen, and economically, that would be a bloody disaster (Even more people on the country's payroll, demanding new hips and slowing the checkout at Tesco's to a crawl).

F***k off. I don't live in China. Smoke yourself to death. Burn all the fossil fuels. I don't want to buy a pack of walkers crisps and be informed via the back of the pack that the manufacture of my tasty snack has put 106g's of Co2 into the atmosphere. Stop talking shit about climate change, if you are really serious, put some cash into perfecting and marketing the fuel-cell car. God i'm sick of all this crap. 20Mph through cities, thats a good one too. Its 2007, we need some innovative ideas to address problems, not an18th Century nanny state.

...but if this is the start of a process of decriminalising all currently prohibited drugs, then I say OK.

If, as most people accept, prohibition and "just say no" doesn't work, then a licence to consume things that have some perceived "society" or personal health cost may be a way to reconcile the ignorant and heartless "they deserve what they get, those evil dirty filthy junkies, and they should pay" with the "think of the children" (mainly my children) sector - as generally kids can't afford a licence for anything.

This is of courcse sidestepping the basic issue that victim-free crimes are immoral and un-enforceable, and everyone else should butt out because it's none of your goddamn business ("mass psychology of facism" anyone?)

Off for a quick toke now...

Phillip, I'm reliable informed that 100% of all people born consequently die at some point. It doesn't matter how much you exercise or how many sprouts you eat. This means that in about 100 years, over 50,000,000 people in this country will have died. That's the size of the UK.

We no longer smoke in enclosed public spaces so you have your clean air. Frankly, you're welcome to it.

Sometimes I think the do-gooders and powers-that-be in this bloody country won't be happy till we're all wrapped in cotton wool, confined to our houses, drinking water and eating fucking soya lest something nasty happen to us.

As a poster in an unrelated comment once said - "Do gooders get fucked!".

/Rant - I'm going for a smoke.

Le Grand's ideal society is one where the entire population is subjected to constant Cognative Behavioural Therapy without the therapist (sorry, I mean government) needing to go through the formalities of gaining consent from the patients (sorry, I mean citizens).

You live in the UK? You won't follow the social rules? That means your sick and need treatment. It doesn't matter if you want treatment, or if anyone outside the government thinks your sick. The very fact that you are unable to rationally chose to behave in a socially beneficial way means you are mentally ill and need 'educating'. And 'educating' means having your picture put up on a board in your local supermarket with 'sub-human' written at the top.

Le Grand - the economic policy of Thatcher and the social policy of Stalin. That's it, I'm voting SNP at the next General Election. Independence for Scotland!

p.s. Anyone who actually thinks that an excercise hour and free fruit will make any difference is nuts. Re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. What a twonk!

p.p.s. Note the number of anonymous coments (like me) - is it the case that people are starting to be afraid of making anti-establisment comments?

If they were to charge £200 for a license to smoke, will drinkers have to pay significantly more? I think the late great Bill Hicks had some very apt things to say about drinking and smoking, about 6 minutes into his "One Night Stand" show (see it on YouTube):

"You gotta understand something, first of all I don't do anything else, now I don't drink, now a lot of your non-smokers are drinking ok? I'm a non-drinker and I smoke, now to me we're trading off vices, that seems fair to me.

'Yeh, no it's not no it's not! Why should our lives be threatened by your nasty habit, nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh...'

Yeah but you know what, I can't kill anyone in a car because I'm smoking a fucking cigarette, alright? and I've tried, turn off all the lights and rush em they always see the glow, 'man there's a big firefly heading this way, shit it's knocking over shrubs!'"

So Julian Le Grand want me to pay £200 a year to have a smoke? How about he pays £200 a year for the right to make stupid pronouncements? How about he pays £200 a year for the right to have a poncey name with french words in it? How about he pays £200 a year to be bald? (or have hair if he isn't)

Who is going to enforce this smoking license? Are the police going to walk past the rioting 10 year olds, the drunken football hooligans, the homeless heroin addicts, the deranged kiddie fiddlers, the islamic fundamentalists, etc in the street to knock on my door and check there's no one smoking without a license in my house?

And that's before I point out that I don't exercise, eat very little fruit, love fast food and I'm 11 stone with a 30-32" waist and perfectly healthy thanks. I don't need some government busy body banning salt in food or forcing food companies to reduce the fat content because little Jimmy ned is a fat bastard. Tell Jimmy to stop being so greedy and eat less rather than ruining things for the rest of us.

At this rate I give it 5 years before I'm off to some country that doesn't restrict it's citizens' freedoms because nanny knows best. North Korea maybe....

My right to dictate to other people stops at the point they stop damaging me. When they only smoke in designated smoking zones and pop out onto the balcony to smoke, they are *not* damaging me.

It's not therefore my business to force my views on them, even if I think it will make their lives better if they give up smoking.

The tax on smoking already generates more money than the health care costs. They already do not smoke in my presence, they are adults with equal rights to make equally bad choices. I am not better than them. The choice I make for them may not turn out to be the best outcome.

If I want them to change their behaviour, I need to *convince* them not *force* them. Being adults they can weigh up my arguments and make their own minds up.

The world would be a better place if we tolerated each others bad choices whenever possible, because maybe it will turn out they are right and we are wrong.

People are gullible.

Not as gullible as people who are in Office though. Even the guy who presented it said it was unworkable.

Ladies and Gentleman it's just padding in a report that's needed to justify his huge stipend (sic!).

Seriously, don't take this seriously.

The government will never stop the sales of cigarettes as they don't want to lose all of that precious tax revenue from the cigarette sales.

If I have to pay £200 to be allowed to smoke then I better be able to smoke damn well whatever I please!

Oh and if this ever came to pass, let's not be biased. A £200 permit to drink should also be introduced.

Fast Food - Major health risk (high salt, makes you fat) - £500/yr

Alcohol - Liver disease, drink driving, anti-social behaviour (ironicly) - £500/yr

Being poor - General bad health, drain on social spending etc.. - £15,000/yr

How else is the government supposed to find the funds so they can retire on pensions at 60 whilst the rest of us have to work till we're 96 because of this current government?

Would I pay £200/yr to smoke? Hell no, many people would quit (and take advantage of the NHS Stop Smoking, costing gov. a fortune), the tax coffers would shrink and the whole country would be even more screwed than it already is.

@ the 100,000/yr deaths - thats a good thing, in 50 years that 5 million people who will die just from smoking and as we're going to have an extra 10 million people here, we'll have plenty of room!