CARS & DRINK AS DANGEROUS

A RECENT report says that smoking in Britain killed 90,000 people last year. The one positive note was that the number of people smoking is going down significantly.

The reduction is welcome but hardly surprising given the display prohibition and heavy taxation of tobacco products.

Manufacturers are compelled to present their wares in unappealing packaging, with all kinds of health warnings plastered over them.

On top of these things smoking is of course banned in many places. All in all smokers have become today’s pariahs.

And yet for all this persecution there has been barely a murmur from them.

They are if nothing else a patient phlegmatic bunch, these cast out coughing smokers.

I thought a second Jarrow march, this time for the poor wretched souls of Britain’s downtrodden tobacco under class, was on the cards.

But the nearest I have ever seen them get to unity of action is standing in open air groups for a smoke and a chat.

I wonder if our long-suffering tribe of anti-heroes actually pose a great dilemma for the rest of us and it is simply this: Why are drinkers and motorists not given the same treatment as smokers?

I for one think it is only fair that they should be.

Is not alcohol a massive problem in Britain and are not cars an existential threat to humanity?

More constraint of these two aspects of society would make Stockport an even greater place to live and work. Name and address supplied