Garth George: Can't blame the food, it's the eater

The latest fuhrer of the Nico-Nazi anti-smoking brigade, the dissident Maori MP Hone Harawira, this week made a statement that sums up one of the main reasons this country suffers so many social and health problems.

He was having a go at our ambassador to Washington, Mike Moore, who fronted a world trade reception last week which was part-sponsored by the giant tobacco company Philip Morris.

Mr Harawira said: "Moore's attendance at this party is a slap in the face for all those who have worked hard to stop the tobacco companies killing thousands of New Zealanders every year and an insult to those families who have lost loved-ones to the country's most addictive drug."

I wonder how long it will take Mr Harawira and his ilk, including the Nico-Nazi's new reichsmarschall, Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia, to understand that it is not cigarette manufacturers who kill thousands of New Zealanders; it is the smokers themselves who choose to inhale what can be a fatal product.

Mr Harawira's outburst is just more evidence that the principle of personal responsibility no longer applies in society. Someone or something else is always to blame.

Fast-food companies, for instance, are another industry constantly under attack for selling so-called "unhealthy" meals and are accused of being the cause of obesity.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. It is not the fast food - little of which, incidentally, is "unhealthy" - that causes obesity, but the inability of some individuals to eat it in moderation.

I am a great lover of fast foods, including pies, hamburgers, pizza, fried chicken and french fries. I eat all of them regularly, but rarely more than once a week. I am also a smoker, and have been for all but 14 months of nearly 60 years, but I restrict myself to a certain number a day.

I am, for my age, in the best of health, which is proved regularly by X-rays and physical examinations. I am not obese or even noticeably overweight. I keep myself in trim by walking briskly for 30 minutes at least five days a week.

In some cities these days, including Rotorua, you can't even smoke in public parks, in spite of the squillions of square kilometres of fresh air around and above.

And I look with vast amusement upon the machinations of those whose lives are so empty that they have constantly to be telling others what they should or shouldn't be doing, backing their positions on their various soap-boxes often with shonky statistics which contain no hint of detailed scientific statistical evidence and which naive and gullible people accept without question.

Now I don't blame Mr Harawira or Mrs Turia for trying to reduce the impact of tobacco on their momo iwi, for there is firm evidence that it is indeed a major health problem among them.

But they aren't going to succeed if all they can do is blame the tobacco companies, any more than they can blame the Maori obesity epidemic on fast-food retailers.

Tobacco products and fast foods are legally sold in this country and it is only to be expected that the firms which sell such products are going to do their damnedest to sell more of them.

Tobacco advertising is forbidden in any form and there are moves afoot to restrict fast-food promotion. Why is it, then, that one of the nation's other big killers and cause of untold social disasters - alcohol - can be advertised without restriction?

It's a funny old world.

garth.george@hotmail.com