I gave up smoking because I decided it was the right
thing to do at the time, not because I thought it was bad for me or because
apart from Cancer and Heart disease, smoking has been blamed for everything
from blindness to impotence, so I wasn’t worried about my heath after all you
always think it will never happen to you.
Nor was it because it has become such an anti-social
habit spawning little clusters of social lepers huddled around doorways or
rubbish bins.
No, I gave up because with a wife three children and a
cat I just couldn’t afford it anymore.
I certainly didn’t stop because of the social Nazis,
that annoying group of people who are not satisfied with living with their own
lifestyle choices, not smoking, not eating meat, saving the planet and
inexplicably wearing beige, they want to convert us too.
In fact, they are determined not to rest until we are
a world of beige clad, non-smoking vegetarian tree huggers.
During my thirty-two-year reign as a satisfied smoker
I never once tried to persuade a perfect stranger to light up, nor have I ever
suggested to a vegetarian that they “get their laughing gear around a chicken
leg”.
Having said all that I would stress that I have urged
anyone who’s favourite colour is beige to seek professional help, I have also
anonymously sent colour charts in the post to the more tragic sufferers.
Now I refer to these people as social Nazis these are
of course not to be confused with Adolph Hitler’s National Socialist Party who
ruled Germany.
Those Nazis quite frankly would never have dared to
invade Poland if the storm troopers had had to wear beige.
But despite a very effective media campaign Cigarettes
are not the personification of evil in the world today - alcohol is and the
social Nazis need a dose realism and a refocusing of their energies onto a much
more troubling situation in our society today namely alcohol induced anti-social
behaviour.
Come Friday and Saturday night every town Centre in
Britain is filled with drunken youth, no that’s not fare it isn’t just the
youth.
The young who cannot handle the booze that is so
readily available and for them so affordable, spill out onto the street either
to commit an assault on a fellow reveler or to be assaulted or perhaps to
collapse in the night air and drown on their own vomit.
Though in truth those who are old enough to know
better are just as bad.
Yet we do nothing to stop it, on the contrary we give
evermore access to drinkers and we have made alcohol available 24/7.
So, what in society is to blame? Smoking, Kebab vans,
coffee shops or bars, pubs and clubs?
Nobody wraps the car around a tree because they smoked
too many Woodbines down the “Lamb and Faggott”, and a man doesn’t go home and
beat his wife because he smoked a whole pack of Rothman’s.
Nobody gets stopped by the police for having exceeded
the legal limit of chili sauce in their system.
Nobody starts a fight outside the kebab shop because
“he looked at my girlfriend in a funny way” as a result of an overindulgence of
kebab meat.
For me the answer is obvious, the car that crashed
into the tree was driven by a drunk driver, the man who went home and beat his wife
was a drunk, the driver stopped by the police was a drunk and as for the man
outside the kebab shop well it was the eight pints of Stella he had down the
pub before he arrived at the kebab house that made him want to fight.
I like a drink myself, but I do it in moderation but
be in no doubt that left unchecked Alcohol ruins lives.
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