The Ardross-Man

ALAN BELL CALLS FOR A CHANGE TO PEOPLE BEING PARKED ON PILLS

THE news is filled with the various health problems people face these days...whether that be Covid, alcoholism, obesity, or smoking.

And it struck me that the solutions to all these problems seem to be rather simple.

For example, now that Covid has been “cured”, we all need to take an annual booster injection to keep us safe. This requires governments to spend millions of pounds every year on vaccines.

Well, of course it would. Pharmaceutical companies are not going to develop a vaccine only to have it binned after a year. They want you to keep on taking the vaccine forever.

The questions, though, are these.

Is it safe? Are there any side effects? Why can’t I just stop taking the vaccine?

I remember when everything was locked down over Covid. When things started to open again, one of the first outlets to open was Wetherspoon’s.

Now the cynical amongst you will say that of course Wetherspoon’s was allowed to open earlier than others, as the owner of Wetherspoon’s was a huge donor to the Conservative party.

Others may point out that although Wetherspoon’s has only paid £1 in every £1,000 they make to the government in tax over the last 10 years, the company, its staff and customers have paid taxes of £5.6 billion to the UK Government.

It’s definitely an incentive to allow them to open early, even although, unlike many other pubs, it’s a place where you can buy alcohol from 9am.

McDonald’s were also allowed to open all their drive-throughs early in lockdown. You may remember the mile-long queues of traffic with people desperate to get a burger.

You have to ask yourself: what exactly is in their burgers that makes people want to queue for hours just to get one?

Well, we all know they add sugar to their burger rolls and even to their chips, to make them more addictive. It’s not healthy, and you can easily correlate the rise in the fast-food industry with the rise in obesity in this country.

And yet McDonald’s UK business received an estimated £872 million in UK Covid-19 tax breaks and subsidies during the pandemic in 2020.

Smoking in Scotland was supposed to be drastically reducing year-on-year but last year this decline slowed down and there was a rise in people aged 1625 years old vaping.

Vaping was promoted as a safer version of smoking, a way of weaning people off the more harmful tobacco products.

So tell me, how are under 16 year olds getting their hands on vapes? Wouldn’t it be better to increase the vaping and smoking age to 21 or 25 years? You’re not weaning a 16-year-old off tobacco; you’re getting them addicted to nicotine at a young age.

All of these problems can be easily solved. The problem is, in my opinion, that if you solve the problem, people won’t need lifelong medication to prevent them.

Medications for appetite suppressant and diet pills, medication to stop you drinking, medications to stop you smoking. You see, pharmaceutical companies gain from you being sick and the government gains by supporting companies that ultimately make you sick. It’s a vicious, never-ending circle.

Sadly, all of these issues could easily be prevented and stopped...if governments weren’t so greedy.

Of course, this is just my opinion. What’s yours?