Why, for once, the nanny state is right

If the nanny state has its way, it won't be very long before life is utterly miserable and boring.

Don't put salt on your bacon or cream on your strawberries, we are told, because it will shorten your life expectancy and potentially make you a burden on the NHS at the expense of those who have dutifully avoided salt and cream, not to mention alcohol, all their lives.

Pah! We all contribute to the NHS, some more than others. It belongs to us, not the Government, and if cream-eating, alcohol-ingesting people wish a fraction of the taxes they pay to provide them with a little remedial medical treatment at some stage in the future, why not? The idea that we have a duty not to put a strain on the NHS is a piece of pettifogging impertinence.

There is a vast conspiracy of politicians and busybody experts who want to regulate our lives down to the smallest detail. Doctors who are forever telling us what not to do, as though they are official representatives of the nanny state, should be put in their place. If they had their way, we would have no fun at all.A glass of South African sherry at weekends and an occasional ginger beer would be all that these zealots would allow.

Until recently, I have opposed in my mind the idea of banning smoking in public places. Smoking may be dangerous, but so are a lot of other arguably much less enjoyable pastimes, such as driving. Why pick on the poor smoker? Cigarette packets are already plastered with warnings promising the hapless smoker certain death preceded by years of terrible suffering. Why should these poor persecuted people not be able to smoke in public places?

Thus have I rehearsed argument in my mind. The campaign to ban smoking in public seemed to me just one more example of the passion of government to micro-manage our lives and curb our enjoyment.

Although not a smoker myself, I felt that I would defend smokers' rights on some mythical barricade in the cause of freedom against the army of bullying politicians, killjoy doctors and meddling bureaucrats.

Moment of realisation

And then came a moment of realisation. Perhaps - who knows? - my thoughts had already been shifting without my knowing it. I found myself in a restaurant alongside two people who were puffing out more smoke than the Flying Scotsman at full throttle. It settled as a cloud around our table and refused to move. Our eyes began to itch, our throats to tickle. At the very least, this was disagreeable. Possibly it was doing us a tiny bit of harm.

Of course, I take it as an article of faith that the medical profession exaggerates the dangers of passive smoking. It suits it to do so. But since no one, apart from a few mad tobacco manufacturers, denies that smoking is dangerous, it follows that inhaling great wafts of tobacco smoke must be a little dangerous, too. This is what I reflected as we were enveloped in a restaurant smog.

Excercising the right to smoke

Might one be at risk after a thousand such experiences? And what of the waiters who serve in the restaurant day after day? A similar thought occurred to me when one of my sons took a vacation job in a bar, and came back smelling like an ash-tray. Was he an unwitting victim of other people exercising their right to smoke in public?

No doubt there are doctors and politicians who secretly would like to ban smoking altogether. I would happily man the barricades against them. If people want to smoke halfway up a mountain or in the privacy of their own homes, we should defend their right to do so - their right, more precisely, to take a risk with their own lives in the pursuit of their own enjoyment.

But what if they take a risk with other people's lives? It cannot be right to subject others to danger simply because we wish to have a good time. Those who insist on smoking in restaurants or bars are, doubtless unthinkingly, putting other people at a tiny risk, which, when repeated by other thoughtless smokers over the years, may become significant.

Smoking is not necessary

The argument, I grant, is a fine one. If I get into to my car and drive down to the main road, I am putting others at risk, however careful I may be, because driving is intrinsically dangerous, and harm may befall others through no direct fault of my own. Should I therefore not drive? It is not an argument anyone would seriously make. One distinction is that driving, or being driven, is sometimes the only way of accomplishing necessary journeys. Smoking in public is not necessary. People do not have to do it.

So, somewhat to my surprise, I find myself on the side of the Government, which is considering introducing a Bill to ban smoking in public places.

Although it is usually never happier than when poking its nose into our private affairs, it remains to be seen whether it will have the courage to bring in legalisation. It is evidently frightened of offending its core working-class vote, many of whom smoke, and some of whom may like to do so in public.

Applaud doctors demanding ban

We should applaud the 4,500 British doctors who have written letters to Tony Blair, delivered to No 10 yesterday, demanding a ban on smoking in public places _ although I recoil at the statistical certainty of one of their number, Dr Peter Maguire, who says that 'it is unequivocably clear that passive smoking kills in excess of 1,000 people a year in the United Kingdom'. I very much doubt whether it is as clear as that.

I can't abide the nanny state, but there is, in truth, no respectable libertarian argument in support of smoking in public places. I am not keen on the state depriving parents of the right to administer a gentle smack to a young child, which issue was debated by the House of Lords yesterday. The Government is forever introducing laws which extend the reach of the state at the expense of the freedom of the individual.

But smoking in public places is a different sort of issue. People deserve the protection of the law against being damaged by the pastimes of other people. I suppose one sop that could be offered, if it were practicable, would be to license a minority of 'smokers' bars', whose clients and staff would specifically sign up to drinking and working in smoke-filled rooms because that would be what they wanted.

Adults must be allowed to harm themselves, but not others. That is where liberal-minded people, and fair-minded legislators, should draw the line. Let us smoke and drink in our own homes, pile on the salt and the cream. But once other people become victims of our actions, the moral equation changes. That is why smoking in public places should be banned.