clipped from www.independent.co.uk “Smokers’ groups and manufacturers have condemned government proposals to clamp down on cigarette vending machines and packets of 10 in an attempt to stop children and young people smoking.”

The NannyNazis are rapidly running out of ideas in their campaign to “de-normalise“ smoking.

These latest ideas are just fucking daft. They won’t have any effect on youth smoking, other than to make it more appealing. It’ll be a challenge to get your hands on a packet of fags - and the guy with the fags will get “respect”.

I’ve never once said that smoking is a good thing, indeed I think we should use all the available existing laws to stop young people from buying tobacco.

We have good enough laws in place - just enforce them. Any retailer found to be selling fags to minors should lose their licence to sell tobacco - no questions, no appeals just take the licence away. And the same goes for drink, by the way.

Scotland has increased the legal age to buy tobacco to 18 - good I say.  But once you reach 18 then you’re free to choose whether you smoke or not - in exactly the same way you decide to climb mountains or not or drive very fast motor bikes or not.

These are all risky activities but we should all have the choice about which risks we want to take in life.

As far as banning fag-machines is concerned I couldn’t give a fuck! They’re a complete rip-off anyway and I’d be delighted to see the greedy bastards who operate them out of business.

No branding? So what, I don’t smoke the packet so a plain white one is fine by me. Actually leaves more room to doodle on it - unless they cover it with pictures of dying people or diseased organs.

Many great inventions started as a scribble on the back of a fag packet!

Hiding them under the counter? Sounds OK to me…

…Or am I supposed to feel like a dirty old pervert when I go into a shop and surreptitiously ask for 20 in a plain bag please!

This is de-normalisation at work.

So no, I’m not one of the pro-smokers complaining about the latest ravings. I don’t care - these measures are bound to be completely pointless and will do nothing to stop youngsters seeing smoking as ‘cool’.

And anyway, how will they roll a decent joint with out some baccy.

Maybe they’ll just skin-up with pure grass instead - looks like it’ll be easier for them to get a hold of than tobacco.

So this is where we’re heading?

Orwell must be laughing up his sleeve!

Let’s just forget about educating our kids about smoking and it’s dangers - we’ll just set up some covert detection so that we can just punish them when they transgress, much easier.

That way they can learn from an early age that they are never trusted by authority and will be spied on for the rest of their lives.

Of course, it’s not as clever as it purports to be - most school kids I know would have this stupid system fucked within a day of installation. Just flick on a lighter everytime you visit the bog, leave smartish and, lo and behold the whole thing is soon swamped with false alarms and becomes totally pointless!

When ARE we all going to wake up!!