Choke on it

In the news yesterday, aside from the death of Oliver Postgate, the Tobacco Manufacturer's Association's response to government moves to ban the open display of tobacco in shops in England and Wales.

The idea is that moving tobacco products "under the counter" will discourage young people from starting in the first place, and evidence from other countries supports this thinking. In Iceland removing displays led to a 10% drop in the numbers of young people smoking.

Smoking research also suggests that people who start smoking between the ages of 11 and 15 are three times more likely to die prematurely compared with someone who starts at the age of 20, and they are also more likely to be hooked for life.

In opposing the display ban, the Tobacco Manufacturers' Association expressed a worry that the move might fuel the sale of illicit tobacco and could damage the income of smaller shops that rely heavily on tobacco sales.

So it's alright to condemn kids to a lifetime of addiction to a proven carcinogen as long as we protect the income of both the tobacco manufacturers and the retailers? Tell that to my mother, who after smoking since the age of 12 now has to fight for every breath, and cannot walk from the kitchen to the dining room without spending the next 20 minutes recovering. In fact why not replace the cigarette displays with looped footage of my mother and people like her?

There's a special place in Hell reserved for tobacco manufacturers, where they are forced to sit like laboratory beagles and inhale their products until their lungs are burnt out. Then a demon comes along and replaces their lungs with a set from another lifetime smoker, and the process is repeated. Ad infinitum.