Er, this isn't so simple really. I speak as an ex-smoker (who'd definitely have been long-dead by now had I not stopped - I was smoking like a maniac. Cigs, pipe - Three Nuns Dark Shag was my favourite ;-) - and cigars, snuff, the lot). I stopped on Feb 21 1978 at 8.05pm. A few weeks later the missus got pregnant with our first, so that kept me going. No tobacco product of any description has passed my lips since that day. I still dream of smoking, half a lifetime on. Giving up was agony for months. I'd tried many times before that. I don't think many non-smokers quite realise how bloody addictive it is. Neither do smokers who haven't seriously tried to give up, say for a month or more.

Whacking up taxes on ciggies (I'd call 'em fags if this was an all-Brit website, of course) is a very blunt instrument. Relatively speaking, it hits poor people much harder than the rich (not unique in that respect, of course, but it still doesn't make it right). I don't necessarily think that the rich deserve to be able to afford to smoke any more than the poor. That's one thing.

Now the health service. Well, it's a very bad thing that the health service gets clogged up with people suffering from illnesses that were in large part avoidable. But, as others have pointed out, smoking-related illness is just one out of many of those. Fast food, ready meals, obesity, lack of exercise, driving too fast and booze also put people in hospital in their droves. The argument "why should the taxpayer pay for these ne'er-do-wells!" is, to say the least, a little thin in the cases of booze and ciggies, at least in the UK, as the government here taxes these things until we squeak. It does very nicely, thank you, out of our bad habits. Less so these days out of smoking, as far fewer people now smoke (but that, in turn, means far less dough spent on treating smoking-treated diseases).

I think we've done quite well (so far) in this country in getting people to stop smoking. There is still a big issue with schoolkids in some areas. I wouldn't deny that draconian levels of tax on smoking must have helped, though a massive amount of baccy-smuggling goes on round here (that's what tax can do for us). But smoking bans in public places - making it really inconvenient for you to have a smoke, a measure that knows no social distinctions - has not only discouraged people from bothering to smoke but has turned the general mindset of the population as a whole against the evil weed. Make 'em stand outside in the cold looking like a right bunch of tits! That's the way to do it, that and making sure we tell the kids every possible smoking horror story available to juice up the horror statistics. I'd like to see the places where smoking is permitted even more tightly defined than now. I don't think anyone should be smoking in the open street or in a moving vehicle of any kind. Designated areas only. People have been prosecuted in the UK for driving whilst holding an apple or a KitKat, so a thing with its end glowing at 900 degrees...?

Those people who so readily advocate taxing cigs (or, rather, smokers, rich and poor) to the hilt, I ask you this: should bottles of wine cost a minimum of thirty quid? Hows about twenty quid for a Big Mac 'n' fries? Beer twelve quid a pint? Pork pies ten quid a shout? Thousand-quid fines for speeding? Hows about fixed-penalty fines for failing to turn up at the gym? Make fatties pay more on trains, boats and planes?