Back in the mid 1990s, I used to write a paid for health supplement for a local paper.
This used to feature such things as arts projects involving people with a mental handicap (sorry no PC here!), new staff appointments, and various health related bits of information such as how to deal with flu. Very useful stuff and no propaganda unless you call promoting things like a breast cancer awareness propaganda but then it was very informative too.
You see, back then there was no hatred of smokers. We were allowed choice even if we were constantly told that what we did was bad for us. The loons who believed the scam of passive smoking were very much a minority in those days although it's fair to say their nonsense was taking ground.
Before I took on the writing of this supplement, I saw each year the huge No Smoking Day promotional stuff which only ever presented one side of the debate and even then it used to wind me up. So when the day came around during my time, I told my editor that I simply could not write it unless the perspective from the smoker was featured alongside it. I said, after all, that as a journalist, I had a duty to add balance.
The editor wasn't so sure because she said it was paid for. Basically the then health authority decided what went in and what didnt so I was advised to speak to the health promotions officer whose remit included such things as AIDS awareness as well.
He ummed and ahhed a bit but then said : "Why not. We know there is a bastion of hardened smokers who don't take on board what we say and we will never reach them. It will be interesting to see how they think."
By the end of the 90s, the pressure to quit really began to squeeze smokers. No longer could they be afforded a sealed room inside hospitals, for example, and soon after banning them from inside, the hospital tried to stop them smoking outside by calling them filthy, dangerous to others, and well, just damn untidy standing around in nightgowns etc..
The war suddenly changed from trying to get us onside, to a kill or cure attack method to eradicate us.
Black market tobacco began to surface, I think, here, anyway, in the early 1990s when the EU border rules changed. I find it odd, that the anti-smoking industry is only now trying to get to grips with it. But the truth is that the Black Market has thrived simply because of the anti-smoking industry's pressure on govt to hike tax on fags so high few can afford to buy them.
The end game for smokers is now in sight. That's why the idiotic campaign by Smoke Free North West uses lies and misinformation in a bid to criminalise those they cannot reach - The 25% of hardened smokers - without having to explain where the figure pulled from thin air of 75% comes from.
So when you see statements such as "75% of people want something doing about this," you know that they are trying very hard to marginalise the 25% of law abiding smokers.
The claim that "fake" tobacco is doing the rounds is yet another lie. There is nothing fake about it except that it is being dealt to the customer through the manwithavan rather than Govt. The baccy is real enough. I've seen it and tasted it.
Personally I don't buy Black Market baccy because I simply don't know where to get it from - certainly our ice cream man doesn't sell it - but I do have friends and acquaintances who do. They buy from other friends and acquaintances who legally go abroad on holiday and think of their friends while there and buy a few packets to share. After all, we're poor, and they do us all a favour. The smoke free bigots also claim it is foreign. Of course it is. It comes from abroad. I should add that I know of none who would sell to kids. It's simply not worth wasting when it is so scarce anyway. Do the smoke-free wallies really think we're that stupid - oh, yes, of course they do. We're smokers.
History shows us that when tobacco tax gets hiked, people don't stop smoking, they find cheaper ways of getting tobacco. Back in the 16th century, King Charles*, who personally hated tobacco and believed it made smoker's brains black, banned it in all London alehouses. He also hiked up the price something silly like 1000% The result was the peasants began to grow their own and the loss to the treasury was so great, he had to rethink his policy for the good of the country.
I say take heed politicians. We smokers will not be eradicated however much lying propaganda is put out about us. However much you try and criminalise us, demoralise us, eradicate us, we will continue smoking. And we intend to hit back by buying our tobacco abroad legally for personal use so that our taxes are no longer used against us to fund the lies and misinformation from the anti-smoking-smoke-free-ASH self interest industry.
Join the Resistance! Stop buying UK tobacco and cigarettes. Do not fund the anti-smoking industry any longer. Enough is Enough.
* NOTE - Sorry, I can't remember if it was Charles I or II and I don't have time today to look it up but anyone who doubts my word check out Chris Snowdon's excellent book - Velvet Glove, Iron Fist from the link on this blog on the left.