The Fin reprints this piece from the New Statesman by Nick Cohen
I think you can smoke in the Groucho[1], but you can’t in Waitrose or at any Islington dinner party I’ve been to in the past decade. The social taboo against smoking is becoming absolute, in the middle classes at any rate … it is social death to put a cigarette in your mouth, not to stuff cocaine up your nose.
I’m obviously out of touch here. I thought it was de rigeur to go to the bathroom to snort cocaine, and to go out to the porch to smoke. But now I fear total embarrassment at my next middle-class dinner party: obviously I should have the cocaine served at the table. Can anyone give me more details here – are individual salvers the way to go, for example, and is it OK to ask guests to bring some of their own?
To be fair to Cohen, he’s making a serious point, namely that consumers of cocaine, as well as risking imprisonment and health damage, are financing bloody and brutal drug dealers (though, as he concedes, the only real answer is legalisation, and he’s obviously not prepared to advocate that).
But do we have to have the standard self-pitying smokers’ whine about how hard done by they are compared to other drug users? Apart from coffee, tobacco is the only recreational drug you are legally and socially free to consume in public at any time of the day or night[2], subject to the minor restriction that you don’t blow the smoke on other people or smoke in an enclosed space with the same effect. Is Cohen’s tiresome repetition of old-fogey cliches a required part of the process of becoming an ex-lefty?
fn1. A fashionable club in London, it appears.
fn2. The law on public alcohol consumption varies from place to place. But, almost everywhere, the social strictures are far tighter than in relation to smoking.
John Quiggin 
There’s a high correlation between supporting the rights of tobacco smokers to inflict carcinogens on the public at large (physical segregation, a la “the porch�, is invariably a compromise too far) and being an ex- (or never-was) lefty. This is hardly surprising, given (i) the financial links between the tobacco industry and right-wing think-tanks, and (ii) the Right’s general preference for illogical, die-in-a-ditch political positions.
The illogicalness of Cohen’s argument includes his failure to acknowledge that cocaine is not involuntarily shared around when it is consumed in a confined space. Using the Right’s usual logic here, should I have a personal liking for inhaling asbestos fibres (a legal activity, AFAIK), then I should be free to do this wherever I want, including scattering around as much asbestos dust as I want, anywhere in public. And should anyone object to this, they are contemptible, killjoy social engineers.
Anti smoking prejudice is always indicative of censorious bumpkinism and is definitely to be avoided.
No, anti-smoking rules in restaurants and the like are enlightened. Ever tried to taste food or wine while some clowns at the next table are smoking? Talk about externalities …
I forgot to say, above, that another characteristic of the Right’s rhetoric is that it can’t help itself from proving/re-doubling a point just made.
I may be “anti-smoking”, C.L. – I really don’t care what you call me. But for the record (since sublety clearly escapes you), I do not care the slightest about whatever substances/carcinogens you may choose to privately ingest. Indeed, the more the merrier, methinks.
There is a vast oversupply of ex-lefties. Conversely, there are relatively few ways for public intellectuals and assorted pseudos to rebrand themselves.
Petty libertarianism such as defending smokers’ “rights” is inspired by nostalgia for the hedonism espoused by the New Left grafted on to a repudiation of the puritan prescriptiveness for which the Old Left was notorious.
Is Keith Windschuttle a smoker?
PaulW, perhaps this isn’t what you meant, but I must take issue with the implication that Nick Cohen is an ex- or never-was-lefty. He is a democratic socialist with a big emphasis on the “democratic” part and a strong contrarian streak which every good left-wing writer should have. Of all the people who supported the war in Iraq in 2003, he is the one who did most to force an anti-war lefty like myself to think hard about my own position, although he obviously didn’t succeed in converting me.
That said, I am firmly in the anti-smoking camp when it comes to smoking at dinners, in pubs, and in any situation where the smoker is inflicting her/his smoke on others against their wishes and against their interests. You don’t even need to be a lefty to hold this view – J. S. Mill liberalism provides more than sufficient intellectual justification. However I must confess that the emotional roots of my position on this issue come from my childhood experiences of: (a) sharing the lounge room at home twice a week with a grandfather who would litter the room with the debris from his rollies; (b) sharing a bedroom with an older brother who would smoke in bed, fall asleep while so doing and more than once come within an ace of incinerating the two of us; (c) sharing the passenger space of the family car with a father who would smoke on two-hour drives to our holiday destination with all the windows wound up in his white 1970 Valiant.
“PaulW, perhaps this isn’t what you meant, but I must take issue with the implication that Nick Cohen is an ex- or never-was-lefty”.
Paul N – I took my cue solely from John’s post here (see his last line).
Smokers who believe that they have the god-given right to needlessly pollute the personal space of other people with carcinogens are tragically mistaken.
“Is Keith Windschuttle a smoker?”
I hope so.
Nick Cohen has long marketed himself as the leftie who sometimes takes the big stick to what he sees as the failings of the middle class left. (I think he might also have done the same thing on Iraq. Michael Burgess – you would like his writing.)
In his milieu, which is the Guardian / Observer opinion writers, mainly wall to wall lefties who are relentlessly on message, it’s not a bad tactic if you want to stand out from the crowd.
I know right wing think tanks get a lot of money from tobacco companies but it’s still a bit mysterious why right wingers are so viscerally pro-smoking. Some years ago, during the height of the Thatcher years, a delegate at the Conservative Party conference, who was a doctor, spoke in favour of policies to discourage smoking. He was howled down as a “Marxist” and a “wet”.
Hmmm, Paul Norton stole much of my thunder as our posts crossed.
Dave, I see parallels between the smoking issue, the pro-speeding campaigns of self-defined “libertarian” rightists in recent times, and the insistence by some on the right in taking opposition to political correctness beyond legimitate criticism of genuinely illiberal extremes to the point of demanding complete license in how they communicate with, and about, people of different gender, sexuality, race and religion.
This is where the ex-lefty connection becomes significant. One of the least admirable features of the 60s New Left and student radical left was its championing, in the name of libertarian rejection of traditional sexual mores, of a totally amoral, unrestrained and predatory masculine sexual orientation towards women. Second wave feminism arose partly in reaction to this, and one of its achievements (although it’s still a work in progress) was to promote an egalitarian sexual morality of mutual respect as an alternative to the amorality of the angry young men and the patriarchal morality of their fathers. I personally believe that a major factor in the defection of leftists of that generation was the inroads of feminist morality against the hegemony of a certain kind of male leftist’s insistence on being able to behave as badly as he wants.
Of course this is not a respectable reason for defecting from a political camp, so such men covered their tracks with cant about “discovering” the evils of communism or the virtues of the free market. But something like their true colours show when an angry young man of the 60s, who demanded the right to fxxx who and when he wanted to, turns out to be a grumpy old man of the noughties who demands the right to smoke in other people’s faces and drive as rapidly and dangerously as he likes.
“sublety” does escape me Paul, yes.
Paul Norton states that ‘One of the least admirable features of the 60s New Left and student radical left was its championing, in the name of libertarian rejection of traditional sexual mores, of a totally amoral, unrestrained and predatory masculine sexual orientation towards women.’
This seems another example where the political correct left and Christian right have a lot in common when it comes to forcing their morals on other people, including their kids. It is also interesting how negative generalisations about Anglo-Saxon males are viewed as acceptable while mild criticism of other groups is jumped upon. Personally, I would have thought that the pill and changing values played a strong role in liberating women and this lead to an increase in sexual relationships and not the ‘totally amoral, unrestrained and predatory masculine sexual orientation towards women.’ Move over Fred Nile.
You then go on to comment on political correctness moving beyond legitimate criticism of genuinely illiberal extremes to the point of demanding complete license in how they communicate with, and about, people of different gender, sexuality, race and religion.’ Presumably by this you mean that it is unacceptable to point out that Islam is rife with extremism, Muslim men often treat women appallingly, that many black leaders in the US are corrupt, self-serving and racist bigots (Jessie Jackson etc) and that women getting promoted far more rapidly than men in the public service and academia is blatant discrimination.
Paul you and quite a few other contributors to this blog are the type of people that have given progressive politics a bad name and allowed the right to dominate.
“an angry young man of the 60s, who demanded the right to fxxx who and when he wanted to” [provoked]”feminist morality against the hegemony of a certain kind of male leftist’s insistence on being able to behave as badly as he wants.”
If fading memory serves me correctly, 1960s sex within the New Left and its fellow-travellers was overwhelmingly consensual. Conflict arose not when women developed and appreciation of what men wanted, but why they wanted it. This fear of consciousness-raising dod provoke some anger.
However, the New Left composed a quite small part of society and the new morality they pioneered escaped incredibly rapidly into the wider community.
A card-carrying New Leftie male didn’t have to stray far beyond the environs of the bohemian inner ‘burbs to encounter women keen to “explore their sexuality”.
“women getting promoted far more rapidly than men in the public service and academia is blatant discrimination.”
Could it be that one of the victims of this blatant discrimiation is a contributor to this blog?
Dave, very original idea to suggest that comments such as this arise simply from disgruntled individuals. I seem to recall quite a conservative men in the past using that line of argument when women quite rightly demanded equal rights – however equality and positive discrimination are clearly two different things.
Michael, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was also blatant discrimination against people who bravely inform us that politically correct Marxists and post modernists are, to a man, Saddamite apologists who are personally responsible for Margaret Thatcher, even if they weren’t born at the time, …..zzzzzzzz….. sorry about that, I was so bored I fell asleep …… where was I? Wasn’t this thread about smoking? It’s funny how some people manage to steer every – and I mean every – conversation to the subject of the politically correct Marxists and post modernists and how they are Saddamite apologists…. zzzzzz…..
Michael Burgess is upset about something I’ve posted. He is also upset about positions which he ascribes to me but which I don’t in fact hold.
The evidentiary basis of my comments on the issue of the views and the behaviour of New Left and radical student men of the 1960s consists of:
* Reading of second wave feminist literature which recounted the origins of the Women’s Liberation Movement as being in part a reaction against the antinomian behaviour of men within the left. (Incidentally the men in question included Australians of Irish and other Celtic descent, Jews, African Americans and Hispanic Americans, amongst members of other ethnic groups, so I was not simply generalising about “Anglo-Saxons”).
* Reading of student newspapers and other radical literature from the 1960s and early 1970s which provide a very clear window on male left attitudes of the time towards women and sex.
* Reading of autobiographies, memoirs and histories by men and women who were active in the left in that period, which describe and discuss in detail the battles over gender politics within the left at that time.
* Long, well-lubricated conversations on hot Sunday afternoons in Brisbane with men who were young lefties in the 1960s and who made some very frank and rueful admissions about their attitudes and behaviour at the time.
If one takes the view that men should treat women with respect and that relations between the sexes should be based on equality and mutual respect, it is difficult not to be critical of this aspect of the 60s radical movement.
Michael also claims that I’m singling out white Anglo Christian or lapsed Christian for criticism and think that black men, Islamic men, etc., should be immune from such criticism. This is not my view and there is no good reason why Michael should think it is. As a matter of fact, ten years ago I and others of a left/green persuasion were locked in battle with the management of a certain university over a sexual assault and series of incidents of sexual harassment at the university. One of the points in dispute was the university’s plea that we should soft-pedal on the behaviour of the man in question because of his membership of a non-Anglo ethnocultural group, versus our insistence that norms of decent and respectful behaviour and the safety of women on campus should apply and be enforced equally regardless of the ethnicity or religion of those involved.
Michael also says “Presumably. . . you mean that it is unacceptable to point out that. . . women getting promoted far more rapidly than men in the public service and academia is blatant discrimination.”
I decided to do some cursory (and admittedly not very in-depth) research to see whether in fact women were getting promoted far more rapidly than men in academia. I found that 30 out of Australia’s 39 Vice-Chancellors were male, as were 6 out of 8 members of the University of Queensland’s senior executive group, 5 out of 7 members of the equivalent body at Queensland University of Technology, and 6 out of 11 members of the equivalent body at Griffith University. It would therefore seem that us blokes in academia don’t have too much to worry about just yet.
Of course if I was presented with convincing evidence that, in general, women were being promoted far more rapidly than men in academia or the PS, and that in many cases this could not be justified either on merit or on grounds of rectifying historical inequities, I would want to criticise such a state of affairs. But as there is little evidence of this, and considerable evidence of female disadvantage which has yet to be overcome, the point is moot.
“Paul you and quite a few other contributors to this blog are the type of people that have given progressive politics a bad name and allowed the right to dominate.”
Michael, even in cyberspace it doesn’t do any harm to think carefully about what one wants to say, and say it courteously.
Dave, my original post was responding to paul’s broader ‘we the chose few have the right to determine human behaviour post’, so it was relevant.
Paul, You have just proved by broader point about the failure of many social progressives to situate their analysis within a solid empirical framework. Like many who wish to refute arguments of anti-male bias you refer to the fact that 30 out of Australia’s 39 Vice-Chancellors were male etc – well so f…ing what. In our inverted structure of employment what is more relevant to the vast majority of the workforce (including the female wives of males who are discriminated against) are the jobs lower down the pyramid. Now unlike the public service where discrimination in favour of (middle class) women is all too obvious (wander around Canberra public service departments if you don’t believe me), Unis are somewhat of a special case. For while it is far easier for women to get a job or get promoted, there are not many jobs currently available because of the inability of universities to sack non-performing, lazy, dum, and ideologically driven academics. Those mainly still males currently in jobs have decided that the progressive response to this is to favour women rather than take the hard option and get rid of the dead wood (about 75-65 percent of social departments).
Paul, re your comments even in cyberspace it doesn’t do any harm to think carefully about what one wants to say, and say it courteously. When it comes to rudeness, I think PC individuals such as yourself are hardly in a position to lecture anyone- given how quick you and your ilk are to label as racist etc anyone who doesn’t fit in with your perverse worldview. This has though been a very effective strategy in driving real moderate social progressives away from social activist organisations and progressive politics in general.
Michael, if the key selection criteria for those public service positions you unsuccessfully applied for included intellectual rigour, interpersonal skills, the capacity for clear and courteous communication and the capacity to stay calm and act rationally in stressful situations, one does not have to go looking for reverse-sexist discrimination to explain the fact that some female applicants were found to be better qualified than yourself.
A truism for any class: While it’s social death to stick a cigarette up your nose, it is certain death to put cocaine in your mouth.
Michael, while we are on the subject of “a solid empirical framework”, do you have any factual evidence to support your assertion that the public service discriminates in favour of middle class women? Presumably there is more to your “solid empirical framework” than what one might observe by wandering around Canberra public service departments.
Frankly, I find it hard to believe. The public service is run by people appointed by John Howard, after all.
Paul, again I note you resort to personal attack rather than addressing the issues. Although, maybe re jobs I placed too much emphasis on issues such as gender rather than age bias and bias against those who don’t kiss ass. On the issue of clear thinking, I and a small number of other rational lefties and real social progressives are, at least, clear thinking enough too not continually massively exaggerate the evils of Bush, Howard and Blair while playing down the evils and extent of Islamic extremism etc. And here I can’t resist stepping widely away from the topic in question and point out that the Bush haters should now apologise for their past stupidity and acknowledge that intervention in Iraq is clearly encouraging a wider democratic process in Lebanon and other countries in the Middle East.
“Paul, again I note you resort to personal attack rather than addressing the issues.”
Michael, I addressed the issues you raised in your original post) at some length in comment 18.
Also, you aren’t in the strongest of positions to complain about personal attacks considering the gratuitous personal attacks on me in your posts 13 and 19, and your persistent ascription to me of views which I don’t hold and which you have no good reason for believing that I hold. For example:
“I think PC individuals such as yourself are hardly in a position to lecture anyone- given how quick you and your ilk are to label as racist etc anyone who doesn’t fit in with your perverse worldview.”
I would appreciate it if you could provide a reference or a link to any postings or other text, on this site, other blogs or any publication, in which I have labelled anyone “racist” for any reason, let alone because they disagreed with me. If there is one thing on which you and I might agree, it is that the term “racist” is bandied around far too quickly and glibly as a political swear word by people across the political spectrum.
If you are unable to substantiate your accusation, the question of whether you are prepared to offer me an apology is a matter for your conscience to deal with and for others to judge.
Finally, rather than lobbing off-topic references to Bush and Iraq onto this thread, why don’t you take part in the discussion which Jack Strocchi has started (and which I’ve contributed to) on the Monday Message Board thread.
Michael, maybe if you spent less work time posting comments on blogs, that might improve your promotion prospects.
In a single comment above, Michael Burgess wrote these two sentences:
You have just proved my broader point about the failure of many social progressives to situate their analysis within a solid empirical framework.
Now unlike the public service where discrimination in favour of (middle class) women is all too obvious (wander around Canberra public service departments if you don’t believe me).
I wonder which of those statements he didn’t really mean?
woops, Ricardo’s covered this already
The case for banning smoking in public places is compelling, wholly due to the behavior of smokers. That some might chose to smoke is fine, but not to disregard the health of othes from passive smoking. Mutual obligations principles should be applied such that medical expenses and costs directly attributable to smoking should be met by the person who has chosen to take up this foolishly dangerous behavior.
Problem is, wmmbb, that if we apply that logic then we would probably actually owe the smokers a lot. Once you take into account the reduced pension payments that result from a smoker’s propensity to die before the rest of us, the medical bills are actually lower than the future pension liability. In addition, the fact that they also tend to die of simple, terminal disease rather than die late after many diseases probably means the medical bills are similar in any case – they are just brought forward.
If they tended to die before retirement you then wold have to add in the lost productivity of thier later yaers as well, but, as I understand it, they tend to die around the retirement age or not long before.
As Sir Humphrey Appleby put it “…smokers are national benfactors, selflessly laying down their lives for the good of the country.”
I’m a smoker and I have no problem with smoking outside – indeed I prefer it. I like to get out of air-conditioned offices as much as the next person. It’s also a handy way to get time to think rather than just ‘do work’.
Like non-smokers I too dislike the smell of other’s tobacco smoke.
I like smoking and I am addicted, but I certainly don’t think I have right to inflict the smoke on anybody. Matter of fact I think people who do so are both boorish and selfish.
I’m worried, for self-interested reasons, about the implications of Andrew Reynolds’ post. I don’t smoke, I commute a 25km round trip to work by bicycle, I have aunts and grandparents who’ve clocked up three figure lifespans, and my employment at Griffith University has (so far) been too contingent to enable me to fully self-fund my retirement. I shudder to think what future pension liability I’m going to impose on taxpayers! Fortunately it’s not a problem I need to worry about for a few decades yet.
Ask most kids in the US which they’d rather:
Get locked in a windowless room with a running automobile or three people smoking cigarettes constantly and most of them without a sceond’s thought will take the car.
It’s a fantasy, a delusion, and a very bizarre thing indeed.
When I was a mere stripling smoking was as natural as breath for most adults, people smoked in stores, the grocery store for instance, most kids today refuse to believe that but it’s true, I was there I saw it. The smugness of the valiant soldiers who have altered the American cultural landscape in a few decades from blind acceptance to virulent condemnation, using the same subliminal coercive techniques that were originally applied to establish smoking as a glamorous and sophisticated recreation, marks them for fools. Stopping a low-level vice while leaving the engines of doom running full throttle was no accomplishment at all.
The automobile is the single largest killer of children in the US. The numbers of the maimed are legion. And not a peep about that from the moral heroes who’ve quenched all those tiny fires, not one peep.
There is a worse evil about than the anti smoking brigade.
In NZ there is an offence of “being drunk in a pub”.Believe it or not,police patrol inside pubs and arrest drunks.
In light of this, let’s have no more whingeing about anti smoking laws.
Andrew R:
I have no problem with smokers being public benefactors, if that is what they choose, and indeed if that is what they are. I would prefer that they keep their public benefaction to themselves and not include me. Nor, is it true, is their behavior devoid other social costs. The biggest single item collected by “Clean Up Australia Day” volunteers is cigarette stubs – from memory about 33%. If smokers wish to claim individual priviledge, let them restrict themselves to individual costs.
I apologise if I repeat somebody else. There is no externality involved in smoking. People choose whether they enter a place that has smoke. Property rights solves the externality. Indeed, if they can be applied, property rights solve all externalities.
What anti-smoking laws are about is telling the property owner that their decision (if they decide to allow smoking) is wrong. Contra previous comments — the case to allow smoking is perfectly logical. It runs like this: private property rights. It may not be popular (especially at this blog with its largely educated, middle-class, soft-left, non-smoking readership), but it is logical.
Re: the original article. I get the overwhelming impression from my “progressive” friends that cocaine is a perhaps a bit naughty, but so what. Tobacco though… well… that’s just too low-class/redneck to be cool now. Strangely, pot is the wonderdrug that brings all classes together.
JH: If they can be fully applied. Which they can’t. Which is why I support the public policy decision to ban smoking in restaurants, or to mandate provision of non-smoking areas
JH, property rights do not solve all externalities, even if they can be applied; the property rights system itself requires policing, which creates a “physician heal thyself” problem in the face of a state’s assertion of the monopoly of force.
The thing is, all those policing activities get run by the state and the externality of funding them tautologously cannot be handled by the property approach – not and keep the state. The price is mitigated when the property matches people’s natural concepts of property, since the new externality is less than the old – but it’s still there.