Denormalisation of Smoking Nicotine Monkey

The problem of ‘denormalising’ smoking can be summed up like this: will people stop buying cigarettes because they’re no longer available, or will cigarettes no longer be on sale because no one wants to buy them?

The picture shows a street sign near where I live in Tokyo outside a convenience store, announcing that they sell alcohol and – tobacco! (The white writing on the blue background at the bottom right, たばこ.) Thus smoking, unfortunately, is regarded in Japan as normal if you wish to engage in this idiotic behaviour.

The UK and other governments seem fixated on the idea of ‘tobacco control’, whatever that means, as the best, or only, strategy for dealing with the tobacco problem. Indeed, in the convoluted language of WHO, tobacco control is defined thus:

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) is an international treaty designed by countries as the most powerful tool to reduce the health and economic burden caused by tobacco. (My emphasis.)

Note that the FCTC is not just a ‘tool’ to reduce the ravages caused by tobacco (smoking), or even a powerful tool. It’s the most powerful tool, etc., so it had better live up to its hype.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again. Tobacco control, as opposed to tobacco abolition, implies there are some circumstances where smoking is legitimate or acceptable. And what might these be? Would someone please enlighten me?

Fond idea
Another fond idea of the tobacco controllers is that smoking should be ‘denormalised’. This appears to mean making smoking socially unacceptable, or at any rate, less tolerated. But does denormalisation refer to the perception of smoking or the activity itself?

Smoking, the voluntary activity of repeatedly inhaling poisonous tobacco fumes every day, is clearly abnormal. The fumes contain tar, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, ammonia and many other harmful chemicals. Yet smoking is still perceived as normal, if undesirable, in the sense that cigarettes and smoking are widely on public view. Cigarettes are on sale in shops, people may often be seen smoking in the street and designated smoking areas, and cigarette butts littering the ground are a common distasteful sight.

In spite of all this, the tobacco controllers’ idea of the denormalisation of smoking seems to be that, if more smokers quit and fewer people start to smoke, it will largely disappear from public view and thereby become denormalised.

Hopeless
This is a hopeless strategy – it’s putting things back to front. If no one smokes, then by definition smoking will be denormalised. But in order for no one to smoke, smoking will need to be denormalised first. Furthermore, there are many activities which are seldom on public view, for example, men wearing top hats, yet which are regarded as normal on certain ceremonial occasions. In spite of this, there will always be people who, from eccentricity or a wish to stick out from the crowd, do the opposite of what’s regarded as normal.

And even if smoking does become denormalised in the tobacco controllers’ sense, what then? There would doubtless be fewer smokers, but there will always be some people who will want to engage in this abnormal behaviour. What about them?

Obsolete
Even the related idea of making tobacco obsolete doesn’t get us very far. It appears to mean the happy future state when no one will engage in smoking. This will be similar to the situation where, for example, the old British five-pound notes are obsolete because they’re no longer made and thus have ceased to be in circulation. But is the government waiting for natural attrition to occur as a result of tobacco control measures, which will take decades for it to happen, if it ever does?

To be smoke-free, or not to be smoke-free?
A further weakness of the UK government’s proposal for dealing with the smoking problem is shown by their idea of what they call ‘smokefree’ (smoke-free) – a state they hope will occur by 2030. This is another largely useless proposal since it doesn’t mean that no one will smoke, but is defined as no more than 5 per cent of the adult population smoking. You can hardly call that smoke-free, as I argue in an earlier post.

What is to be done?
This question was asked in another context by that horrible man, Lenin. But what is to be done about the smoking problem?

The simple answer, which hardly anyone other than I thinks of saying, is to ban the manufacture and sale of tobacco products. Thus, cigarettes would be abolished (not prohibited, please note), they would no longer be available in the shops for purchase, and smokers would, of necessity, have to cease their dreadful ‘habit’.

If this sounds draconian, there is a humane way around the problem that I explained in an earlier blog.