The Lancet used to be a serious medical journal. No more, alas. In a thuggish editorial (which has appeared, suitably enough, on the 70th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition) it has now called for tobacco to be made illegal:
“If tobacco were an illegal substance, possession of cigarettes would become a crime, and the number of smokers would drastically fall. Cigarette smoking is a dangerous addiction. We should be doing a great deal more to prevent this disease and to help its victims. We call on Tony Blair’s government to ban tobacco.”
In a way, I suppose, we should be grateful that this piece of trash has been published, for, it shows the anti-tobacco jihadists for what they are, bone-headed, presumptuous, arrogant and with a contempt for humanity so profound that it has, quite obviously, become pathological.
They also make the tobacco companies look honest by comparison. Do you remember all that talk about how much tobacco ‘cost’ society (always a nonsense calculation, by the way, in that it excluded the, cough, cough, savings in pension costs that a smoking habit was likely to entail)? Well, look at this, also from the same editorial:
“The UK public, though, is better at facing facts than its government, perhaps because the UK public does not have to consider directly the £9·3 billion per year raised in tax revenue on tobacco. Compared with that figure, the cost to the National Health Service of smoking-related diseases of £1·5 billion a year seems paltry. So does the £1 million the government spent on a television campaign with images of babies apparently smoking to illustrate the dangers to children of second-hand smoke, and the £138 million spent helping smokers to quit.”