The prohibitionist empire - the empire of the bonkers.

This is an excellent Summary of Key Dates in the anti-tobacco campaign on the ASH UK website. It will show you how collaborative with Government they have been. And how the prohibitionist empire has grown step by step. It is a record of progressive compassionless action against real humans who smoke.

This summary leaves out the drip drip of purposeful propaganda over the years that has educated us in every conceivable format to ensure that society is encouraged and empowered to stigmatise smokers. Stigmatisation is openly and happily encouraged by tobacco control, with purposeful intent, to turn people away from smoking, and society against smokers with no thought of the morality of their actions. Link

In the same period of time the stigmatisation of racial and ethnic minorities, LGBT persons, HIV carriers and pre-marital pregnancy is "denormalised". Society is made aware of individual human rights, and sensitised to the misery that stigmatisation causes when it is practised against people. But not smokers, of course.

So this is also a record of the increasing and vicious mal-treatment of a whole group of people - smokers - the forgotten, politically disempowered, isolated quarter of the people of the land.

Smoking prohibition has been highly profitable for people in advisory groups, anti smoking charities, lobby groups, specialist health workers, anti smoking science, personally ensuring permanent employment for themselves, but also for all the businesses aligned with the ideology from snake oil salesmen to pharmaceuticals. It has become a whole and complete new profitable world wide empire.

It has been frightfully expensive to economies, to governments and emotionally, to real, living, breathing people.

Many of the problems of smoking and its effects on others could have been easily solved with our modern technology in air filtration. where separate facilities for smokers could have been offered so that they were not condemned to the streets - or not condemned, period.

Separation of facilities seemed. once, an idea  that even smokers were happy to co-operate with, but stigmatisation is NEVER acceptable.

The prohibitionist empire has now become an insanity, a world wide mad hatter's tea party.

The true pottiness of it is now being exposed by the response of the prohibitionists to vaping. Electronic cigarettes are not smoking. They are an amazing solution to the problem of smoking. We can use them to get round the smoking bans. We can use them to resist our persecution as smokers. We can have avoided our stigmatisation as smokers. We envisaged being treated as real, living, feeling creatures in charge of our own health. We could have been jubilant in regaining our power!

We COULD have been......

But the empire of the bonkers can't afford to allow it.