IN HER autobiography the actress, singer and former heroin addict Marianne Faithfull mentioned in passing that John Lennon, himself a former addict, expressed the opinion that “smoking grounds you”.1 Lennon’s friend and erstwhile collaborator David Bowie, an enthusiastic consumer of illicit substances in his younger days, once said that of all the drugs he had tried, nicotine was the hardest to kick. By his fiftieth birthday in 1997 he was still dragging on a Marlboro Light, having given up everything else. After years of heavy drug use he was, comparatively speaking, clean, but still in the grip of the beastly fags.
In 2007 the artist David Hockney robustly opposed the UK smoking ban. In a debate with a female MP whose name now escapes me, broadcast on Radio 4’s Today Programme, his reaction to her prim insistence on the need for the ban was the devastating, “Ooooh! You’re so dreary!” Now well into his ninth decade, Hockney maintained quite recently that:
“I smoke for my health - my mental health.”
To someone who has never smoked, this must sound preposterous, but I know exactly what he means.
I could take you through my own battles with this devilish habit, but I won’t - it would consume volumes. Suffice it to say that after all these years my conclusion is that the practice of smoking is indefensible, and that any genuine, respectful and compassionate ideas by government to help curb it are to be welcomed. But that is not what is currently on offer from the Prime Minister.
Keir Starmer’s Labour government is planning, we hear, to ban smoking in outdoor public areas, or rather, they’ve leaked the idea to the press to see what voters will make of it before they decide whether to implement it. This is Starmer’s way - he throws policies at the wall to see what will stick, and what might harm him politically. Last week he was waffling on about how smokers cost the NHS money - tax payers’ money! - the usual well-worn mantra. Say it often enough and it’s true. Except it’s not. Please, if you are a non-smoker, do not be deceived by this moronic rhetoric. The government does not give two hoots about your health, or mine. In medical terms they regard us as biological units to be costed, corralled and controlled. If they ban smoking tomorrow - and why don’t they, by the way?2 - not a single penny more will be spent on the NHS, or on you. Starmer talks about saving money, but has not yet explained how such savings, even if calculable, would be used. Whilst denigrating smokers for their selfish absorption of precious resources, government spokespersons avoid, for once, the argument that smokers die younger than non-smokers. They avoid it because it unravels their whole argument. Since it is a well-established fact that on average, non-smokers outlive smokers, does it not therefore follow that their consumption of NHS resources might even out over the course of a lifetime? In addition, might the tax that the government greedily gobbles up from tobacco sales help offset the cost of healthcare for this tiny, uniquely selfish band of sinners? Why not use the 16.5% of retail price plus £6.333 currently levied on every packet of cigarettes sold in the UK as a kind of medical insurance for smokers, and stick that up your NHS budget?
It’s not that I object to the government doing what it can to improve our health - I think the 2007 smoking ban was a good thing - it’s the hypocritical way they go about it that gets my goat. After many years I have succeeded in reducing my habit to the occasional vape. I never smoke in front of children, or anywhere it might bother other adults. I took up smoking at the age of seventeen and found it to be a tangible comfort, indispensable in coping with undiagnosed mental illness. In the absence of any help from the NHS, smoking played a significant part in keeping me functioning and, the Prime Minister would no doubt be delighted to hear, from being a burden on the state. Until I met my husband I battled my illness more or less alone. Where possible I preferred not to burden friends with my misery, and used cigarettes and sometimes alcohol to self-medicate. As a result of this attempt at self-reliance, my NHS medical file is as trim as a marathon runner. Does that make me a good citizen, Prime Minister? Or not? I’m confused.
To some whataboutery (and why not?). I am mystified as to why the vice of smoking is so inoculated against compassion. For alcohol, drug and food addiction, there is a degree of appreciation that other social factors are at play, yet smokers endure almost universal contempt. What about the “burden” on the NHS created by obesity, alcoholism, drug addiction and other conditions that, just like smoking, do not easily fit the category of "unavoidable” diseases? Just think about that for a moment. What will the government target next? Fertility treatment? Remedial surgery for botched cosmetic procedures? Abortion? The “avoidable” injuries with which patients visit A&E departments on a daily basis? Sports fractures, perhaps? And what about mental illness? Might there be some savings to be made there? Will they be sternly telling people with anorexia nervosa to pull themselves together, eat up and stop bed-blocking? Come on. Let’s show some empathy, get sensible and recognise that this is the thin end of a very big wedge.
To those happy to place smokers in the stocks I would say that there is hardly a human being in the western world who has never abused their body, be it with a glass of alcohol, a Big Mac, a tattoo or a cream bun, so you might think twice before denouncing others as weak or stupid. Unless you are living on mung beans and water and running five miles a day, forgive me if I take your imprecations with a pinch of menthol-flavoured tobacco. Oh - I can’t - that’s been banned too.
Go ahead, Prime Minister, pass your bourgeois, authoritarian laws. No doubt you will soon be looking for someone else to punish, and by the way, good luck with the economy. Thanks to the cost of living crisis, my enjoyments are already considerably restricted by the difficulties of finding good quality eateries and hotels of a reasonable standard - clean, affordable and, whisper it, animal-free - and I am close to conceding defeat. When I am no longer permitted a glass of wine and a quiet vape in a cold, rainy beer garden, my support for your creaking hospitality sector will, like a guttering candle, finally be extinguished. Then, I’ll stock up on some supermarket plonk, forget recreational travel and take a closer look at the NHS. If the government is now awarding points for the deserving sick, it’s time I started spending some of mine.
Faithfull by Marianne Faithfull with David Dalton, p. 320.
See footnote 3.
Office for Budget Responsibility website. They estimate that in 2024-25 tobacco duties will raise £8.8 billion.
Enjoyed this.
"Unless you are living on mung beans and water and running five miles a day, forgive me if I take your imprecations with a pinch of menthol-flavoured tobacco. Oh - I can’t - that’s been banned too."
Hahaha. Yes!
Great piece Julia. So many good points made.
I think many of us know this is not about helping the NHS. The question is, what is it about? Wielding more control? Closing down pubs? Avoiding lawsuits? What exactly is the underlying aim?
To be continued no doubt.
I hope that whatever Rayner may (or may not) have been ploughing into at her recent rave has all been appropriately cost offset.