Last week I wrote a piece for The Guardian on how anti-smoking hysteria had reached new heights with Dr Judith Nathanson of the BMA's call for films which feature smoking to be reclassified. A week is a long time in politics, but it's also a long time when it comes to anti-smoking hysteria.
Welsh Culture Minister Rhodri Glyn Thomas has been forced to resign. What do you think his offence was:
(a) claiming an extraordinary amount of expenses for himself and his family
(b) being caught having an extra-marital affair with the wife of a colleague
(c) walking into a pub with a lit cigar
Yup, you've guessed it, it was c.
It's sobering thought that if this wave of anti-smoking hysteria had been around in the 1940s, Winston Churchill (pictured above), a chain smoker of cigars, would never have become British Prime Minister. Britain- and the free world- would have lost the war and the Nazis would have ruled supreme. Millions of Jews, Slavs, Roma, communists and others deemed to be 'untermenschen' would have been exterminated.
But for the anti-smoking fanatics it wouldn't have been all bad news: old tobacco-hating Adolf would undoubtedly have passed a smoking ban.
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