Smoking, Class, and the Legitimation of Power: Reflections on the War Against Tobacco and on the Rise of the New Puritanism

"The puritan hated bear baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators." T.B. Macaulay, 1848 The "War against Tobacco" is a fact of modern life. We have high taxes, bans on promotion, campaigns against smoking, and growing attempts to criminalise smoking outside the home-and even inside the home. In this book, Sean Gabb shows that the "War" is part of a much larger project of lifestyle regulation by the ruling class, and that its final victory will be to reduce us to a mob of terrified and atomised serfs, toiling for the enrichment of others. He examines this "War" in its political and historical and its theological aspects, showing its alleged justifications as nothing more than a discourse imposed by the ideological state apparatus. Extract: The function of the war against tobacco is to provide a set of plausible excuses for the extraction of resources from the people and for the exercise of power over them. There is nothing new or unique about this war. It has been waged on and off for centuries. It is similar to the established wars against alcohol and drugs, and to the gathering war against supposedly unhealthy foods. Though, with the decline of public rationality, we now have our own witches and heretics to be combated-or, to be explicit, our racists and our paedophiles-the regulation of lifestyle is still the most plausible set of excuses for enlarging the income and status of our ruling class. This is a class issue, and no discussion of tobacco policy can be complete without an understanding of the dynamics of class. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: SMOKING, THE RULING CLASS AND LEGITIMATION DISCOURSE THE RIGHT TO SMOKE: AN HISTORICAL VIEW THE RIGHT TO SMOKE: A CHRISTIAN VIEW THE RIGHT TO SMOKE: A CONSERVATIVE VIEW COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING: A THREATENED HUMAN RIGHT TOBACCO, CHILDREN AND ENTRAPMENT: A CASE FOR CONCERN? SAVING THE KIDDIES, ENSLAVING ADULTS THE PASSIVE SMOKING SCARE: WHEN RULING CLASS PROPAGANDA MASQUERADES AS SCIENCE Sean Gabb is a writer and broadcaster whose novels, written under the name "Richard Blake" have been reviewed in the national press and translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Hungarian, Slovak, Indonesian and Chinese. He is Director of the Centre for Ancient Studies, and he lives in Kent with his wife and daughter.