Dialogue: Let's give smokers the dignity of being illegal

By COLIN HOGG

Speaking as a chap without a chimney on his head, I'm beginning to feel something I thought I'd never feel. I'm beginning to feel sympathy for those devils, the smokers.

Everyone's been kicking their butts, putting up their prices and making the world so smokefree that there's nowhere left for them to go except carparks and back alleys. It's only a matter of time before a direct link is detected between muggings and smokers.

They are the new lepers, the post-modern untouchables. They are their own no-go zone - and all for a habit that, only a handful of decades ago, was seen as smart and sophisticated. It just doesn't seem fair.

When I grew up, I wanted to smoke cigarettes because it seemed like what you did when you grew up. My dad smoked a man's fag - Pall Mall plain - and mum smoked Matinee, which came in a swish yellow packet. She didn't like smoking, but forced herself to have one or two in social situations, always sucking half a Lifesaver to disguise the dreadful taste.

The Beatles all smoked cigarettes and so did the Rolling Stones. Smoking was non-negotiable. You smoked or you stiffed. I smoked the first opportunity I could. Then the second and the third and then I was hooked. And I loved cigarettes. I smoked so many I sometimes had several going at once.

They were what your spare hand was designed for holding. They were a sort of social glue. We offered each other cigarettes, bludged them and bonded and tried to chat up girls over them. You smoked your chosen brand like you drank your chosen beer and drove your chosen car (if you could afford it).

They made your voice sound deeper and more interesting and they made my Uncle John cough for so long that he'd turn as purple as a grape and look like he was going to drop dead. His favoured fag was extra-strong pipe tobacco rolled in cigarette papers, but no one ever blamed his outrageous coughing on that.

The moment I joined a newspaper, my life became even more smoky. You could hardly see across some of the newsrooms in which I worked. There was an active ashtray on almost every desk and that was the way we liked it. It was part of the legend.

But somewhere back there the world started to change. People stopped eating lamb every day and started to stop smoking. In the pivotal 1980s the trend accelerated. My dad had stopped by then. Even the incorrigible Uncle John gave it away. He's 81 now and he still coughs.

Even I stopped smoking, although I had a lot of trouble knowing what to do with the spare hand. It flapped around alarmingly at first without a cigarette in it. And soon smokers were in the minority. And then the smokers realised they were outnumbered and started asking if you minded if they lit up. Some people even said they did.

Then the smokers started going outside. In the city, they cluster on footpaths and they bond and they talk as they smoke and they probably mutter about how soon they'll be forced to huddle in converted phone boxes or risk arrest and how fags are costing them $50, $60 or $70 a week and the health warnings on the packets are getting to be so big they're frightening.

If they light up in a bar, they're likely to get yelled at and threatened by nasty smokefree strangers. And soon they may not be able to light up in bars at all - Lord knows where the smoke police will strike next in their relentless pursuit of the demon cigarette. It just doesn't seem fair.

And it's an odd thing that, at the moment, on the question of what's socially acceptable, it seems the cigarette smokers are moving out and the marijuana smokers are moving in. But in pursuance of that sort of trend, what could be done to be clear and fair about tobacco would be to outlaw smoking altogether.

Make it a Class C drug. If you're found in possession of more than four cartons, you're charged with supply. If your car smells of ciggies when the police stop you, you're in trouble. That would be fair.

There's a dignity at least in being illegal.

* Colin Hogg is an Auckland writer.