The illiberal anti-smoking campaign

"You got a lifetime. No more. No less. You got a lifetime." The Sandman by Neil Gaiman.

The sadness when people die before their time is far greater than for those who die in old age. Dying in old age is a good thing. The last thing youngsters need is to be supporting millions of cadaverous old people hanging on long after their moment to shuffle of this mortal coil should rightly have arrived. Most people have no great desire to outstay their welcome at the slightly-embarrasing tea-with-the-neighbours that is life, especially as their decendants start yawning and looking meaningfully at their watches ("Is that the time already? It's been great, but we could really do with a good night's sleep and the money from your will now.").

All the time we talk about "saving lives". The smoking ban saves tens of thousands, better healthcare saves many thousands more, billions spent on anti-terrorist security has saved a handful of lives. But we don't really mean saving lives. We don't mean that a person who would have died will now no longer die, will settle down to a few centuries of becoming a really serious drain on the State.

No, we mean their lives have been extended, perhaps only for a brief period but hopefully to allow them to live to a ripe old age. And we pretty much accept that older isn't always better. Most of us, I suspect, would prefer to die with our faculties intact aged 80 than after a couple of decades of dementia aged 100. I argued last month that the league tables and mortality statistics that often drive health policy to put too much weight on having us live as long as possible at the expense of helping us live as long as we want to, which may involve a trade-off like giving up a few years of our lives for the pleasure of smoking or drinking.

Which is why the latest campaign to get people to give up smoking leaves me cold. What is it trying to achieve? If someone's addicted to smoking, a few nasty pictures are unlikely to overcome the chemical hit nicotine delivers to the brain. The ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces has already protected those of us who don't smoke as far as we have any need to be (perhaps even more).

This feels to me more like a campaign to punish people for smoking: you might be addicted, but by God we're going to try and stop you getting any pleasure from it. A nasty puritanical "we know what's best for you and you shouldn't be enjoying yourself".

Well, sod it. Since when did the State get to decide how long we should live for? Any smoker who shortens their life by a few years is saving us a fortune in state pensions and old age medical care. Once adults know the facts about smoking, have access to help to give up if they want to and aren't bothering non-smokers, I think we can give up on trying to make it as miserable an experience as possible.

We get a lifetime. No more, no less. The role of society, the State, and in this case the EU, should be limited to freeing us to make our own informed decisions on how long that lifetime should last and what we should be doing with it. Keeping us alive and miserable for as long as possible might boost our standing on the international life expectancy tables but does us as citizens no favours.