There is something in the air

College seems to be on the anti-smoking warpath again. Bins and ashtrays are mysteriously disappearing from places like the RSM entrance and my inbox is filling up with passive-aggressive emails. Interfering busy-bodies have made it their mission to enforce the ridiculous ‘smoke-free’ zones around campus and teenagers with the glazed look of Jehovah’s witnesses, wearing NHS tabards, roam the streets ambushing perfectly innocent pedestrians. All right and good? No it is bloody not. I am a proud smoker and I am starting to get seriously peeved.

For me personally smoking is not a tragic addiction. I am not crying out for an intervention, desperate for a passer-by to save me from a crippling vice. I smoke because I genuinely enjoy it and my choice is a rational one. I find the process of rolling a cigarette and contemplatively breathing in the smoke almost meditative. I love the social aspect of hunkering down in a doorway, sheltering from the rain and putting the world to rights with a friend. I love the gentle flirting over zippo flame outside a club. I love watching smoke lazily climb into a dusky sky over a glass of red wine. I love the post-coital surge of nicotine out of a bedroom window as my girlfriend dozes in bed and most of all I live for those early morning moments, walking alone, watching the light of the moon bounce of the millpond surface of the Thames.

Here is the big scoop. I am not going to stop just because a puckered lipped old granny fakes a cough. I am a stubborn mule and the intrusion of anti-smoking crusaders is only going to make me more so. I will give up when I am good an ready and not a single minute before.

Smokers as a group have been marked out as a scourge on society and a free-fire zone for snide remarks, unwanted criticism and outright bullying. When the smoking ban was suggested a lot of people saw the sense in the policy and gracefully rolled over. However, this seems to have set a precedent for a rolling process of increasing stringent rules about when and where a smoker can indulge in an activity, which is essentially an individual’s choice. Well, I no longer feel obliged to subscribe to the lip-service. The feeling of being straight-jacketed into a weird self-loathing has gone on long enough and it’s time smokers started standing up for themselves

I smoke because I genuinely enjoy it and my choice is a rational one

Here is a common myth: by smoking I am costing the taxpayer through my future health costs. This is wrong. In 2009, researchers from Oxford University estimated the annual cost of smoking to the NHS at £5bn. That sounds like a lot, right? But it pales in comparison to the £9.5bn that excise duty on cigarettes contributed to the treasury in the same year. On top of this, the sale of tobacco contributes billions more through VAT and corporation tax. So, I pay for my habit, a few times over in fact.

Here is another: passive smoking kills. Yes, it does affect long term health outcomes but you need a lot of exposure. The amount of smoke breathed in by waitresses and barmen in confined environments, over the course of their career has been shown to have a significant effect. However this argument does not extend to outdoor locations, no matter what your proximity to a building entrance. That is just common sense, I’m afraid.

Finally: smoking kills. No one is denying that smoking dramatically affects your chances of acquiring conditions like lung cancer and vascular stenosis. However some slightly awkward research from the University of Toronto shows reductions in life expectancy are almost totally negated if you quit before the age of 40. It turns out that smoking is bad for you in a much more specific way than people would have us believe. If you restrain from smoking around kids or for an extremely long period of your life it is simply is not that bad. Shock horror, the rigorous and reliable science of epidemiology has led us astray again.

So what are we left with as a justification for hounding smokers further and further into the wind and rain? What reasons do we quote for ostracising this particular portion of society? Wait for it… Some people do not like the smell? Well screw them, quite frankly. I find lots of things annoying - bad breath, bad fashion sense, bad music - but I am not deluded enough to believe for a minute that my opinions give me the right to tell other people how to live their lives. If you do not want to smell the smoke all you have to do is get out of my face.

There is one final objection from a recent emal: “[Smokers do] not present our university in the best light for visitors.” This seems to be suggesting that College want to airbrush out around a third of the undergraduate community for aesthetic reasons, which is frankly bizarre and barely merits a rebuttal. If we are happy with this argument I would suggest we first focus our attention on tackling the problem of Ugg boots on campus.

Having found very little to support the current purge, here are my suggestions. If you are the type of person who rolls your eyes and tuts every time ou choose to brush the edge of some transient puff of smoke, my advice is to suck it up, get over yourself, show a bit of empathy and find something more important to worry about. To my brothers and sisters who enjoy the occasional puff on a cheroot, cigarillo or humble rollie, show a bit of pride. There is no need to pretend to be quitting when you clearly do not want to. Let’s keep doing our thing and when the anti-smoking Stasi kick up a fuss, smile, edge away and wait for them to turn the corner before ignoring them.

Better still, how about we all try to show a bit of understanding for other people’s life choices. Now I have finished writing this I am going to have a fag and woe betide anyone who tries to get in my way.