The Spectator

And other outdoor areas too. Seriously.  Mark my words, however, we'll be hearing more on this, no matter how daft it may initially seem.

It continues to mystify me that organisations such as ASH are listened to as though they were some kind of independent umpire, while groups such as Forest are dismissed simply because they receive some funding from tobacco companies. In a sensible world this would not be the case.

In any case, the logic of a ban on alcohol advertisig is as feeble as the logic of the ban on tobacco advertising. You might just as sensibly ban advertising for car insurance since, as with alcohol and tobacco, the car insurance industry doesn't so much promote the idea of car insurance as try to persuade you to use a given company's product.

Have you ever met anyone who, back in the day, decided to start smoking because Embassy sponsored the World Snooker championships or who thought they'd abandon their teetotal past because Carlsberg sponsor Liverpool football club? I rather doubt it.

Perhaps the drinks industry will be made of sterner stuff than Feeble Tobacco whose resistance to the smoking bills was disappointingly lame. (Apart from anything else, the smoking legislation was a grievous infringement upon property rights.) One can only hope so.

Slippery slope arguments are always trcky things, but sometimes there's obvious evidence to support them. As Mr Clark points out:

You don't get out much do you dearie?

Been to any UK town centre on a Saturday night?

Had a squiffy little look at the vomitting teens soiling the back of a Police van?

Had a glass smashed in your face courtesy of a pissed lout outside O'Neils ?

Maybe you live in Islintgon, where the chattering classes do so at oh so polite dinner parties.

But take the train twenty minutes south, to Richmond, on a Saturday night, and you'll be in for a shock.

Nobody - you revisionist - is calling for Temperance. Not even those working in casualty on a Saturday night at Kings in Camberwell. Though you'd thing they might, given the vast majority of injuries they treat are related to drink.

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