OPINION
Phil Green
Yesterday, Kerre Woodham treated the world to an opinion piece on NewstalkZB about the perils of smoking.
Her main point was, “You wouldn’t want your children doing it.” Well, in the deep well of excess that we worry about our children getting up to these days, I consider smoking to be in a category at the lesser scale of offending.
Now, I know after my highly unpopular last article about Sue Bradford, that I’m even less likely to win many fans with this piece. But the point is, you have to confront the prevailing ideas, which here on The BFD we call “The Narrative”. It’s adult to debate these matters, lest we become caught up in a dystopian world similar to that imposed on the country for the past two years.
I believe the diktats of the Smoke-Free agenda to eliminate cigarette smoking by 2025 in New Zealand, to be no less an assault on personal freedom and choice than that endorsed by the Labour Government last year to mandate that New Zealanders be injected with something they believed was untested, at pain of losing your job for not complying.
That no one is making this connection and seeing the obvious over-reach of bureaucrats and government on the matter of eliminating a legal enjoyment, again makes me consider that New Zealand isn’t as libertarian as we like to think.
This is a huge issue, but we’ve been brainwashed to believe that smoking is simply bad, no questions asked thank you. Shut down the discussion and welcome governmental control. Don’t get me started on vaping, another can of worms.
The thing that’s overlooked and never discussed by the highfalutin masterminds of public health, is to ask their victims why they smoke. My personal experience is why I’m passionate about leaving people alone to make their own decisions about health.
Sound familiar? About 10% of BFD articles in my real rough guesstimate would be banging on about the same freedom of choice, which is why I subscribed to The BFD.
Smoking tobacco is about the reduction of stress, and indubitably, pleasure. I don’t know how it works, but smoking for me personally has been a welcome and reliable way to combat the stress in my life. It’ll come as no surprise to most that in the Second World War soldiers were given free cigarettes. Why is that? The most terrifying time in a person’s life faced with combat, and what helps that trauma? It’s not days by the sea, though that helped too.
Given the controversy about cheap alternatives to early intervention drugs against the world’s deadliest disease, seen here in recent articles, do you think it’s not too much of a stretch to think something similar is going on with the demonisation of a cheap but efficient solution to a person’s stress?
Far better to prescribe those people suitable (and costly) pharmaceutical drugs like anti-depressants, because that’s the alternative that’s been offered by health professionals while tut-tutting about your smoking habit.
The obvious line is that it’ll shorten your life. I say, “So what”, as long as I enjoyed the time I had on this earth. In fact, I believe that the stress reduction I experience by enjoying smoking might not lead to a longer life, but it’s a life where the valleys have been smoothed out. I have no interest in a long life in a rest home.
To finish, this is an article about personal choice and there isn’t a need for a nanny state to intervene. The nanny state proved it has abrogated civil responsibility to its citizens over the past two years.
And to those who are still willing to embark on taking an injection for life or those who continue smoking to enjoy life, it’s a similar paradigm. The risks of both are your personal choice.
I think it’s quite simple when it’s put like that.