The 'u' word puts paid to some of life's pleasures

BY LINLEY BONIFACE

OPINION: There is nothing more disgusting than somebody else's bad habits. Our own bad habits, on the other hand, are so much more rational, justifiable and forgivable.

Take smoking. When the Government passed tax legislation last week that raised the cost of a pack of cigarettes by $1.10 overnight and by almost $5 within two years - yet another decision sprung on us without warning, a tactic fast becoming a hallmark of this administration - it's a fair bet that most of the MPs voting on it weren't planning to rush to the nearest petrol station before midnight to stock up on Benson & Hedges.

Maori Party leader Tariana Turia had a distressing family history of smoking - her grandmother raised Mrs Turia and her cousins after her mother, a heavy smoker, died of cancer.

Horrifyingly, all those cousins have since died of smoking-related illnesses. It was a moving speech, but one that most MPs would have found a world away from their own experience.

The facts are as simple as they are disturbing. Overall, about 20 per cent of adult New Zealanders smoke - a figure that tells you absolutely nothing, as the statistics are overwhelmingly skewed toward the poor and the brown. Almost half of Maori women smoke.

The legislation was welcomed by just about everyone apart from smokers themselves and those pantomime villains, the tobacco companies. ACT MP Sir Roger Douglas, one of just four MPs who opposed the price rise, called it an attack on the poor.

I've always thought that agreeing with something Sir Roger says would be a reliable sign that I needed to admit myself to a quiet, secluded facility that required me to check in my shoelaces and any sharp objects at the door.

And yet, despite the fact that Quitline had its busiest day ever after the legislation was passed, something makes me deeply uneasy about a tax law that will hammer the poor more than anyone else.

Don't get me wrong - smoking is a risky habit, and it would be wonderful if everyone quit tomorrow. But they won't, and smoking isn't the only thing we do that's bad for us.

It's stupid to smoke. It's also stupid to eat too much, or to avoid exercise, or to get tanned, or to wear shoes that aren't sufficiently sensible, or to eat less than five servings of fruit and vegetables a day, or to get less than six hours' sleep a night. The only difference between smoking and the rest of these habits is in the degree of stupidity.

Smoking alone is regarded as a habit that is not just unhealthy but occupies the same moral territory as machine-gunning kittens. We're happy to penalise smokers through taxes in a way that we'd never dream of penalising the fat, the inactive, or the dangerously tired.

In last week's Guardian newspaper, a report from Britain's Democracy Institute suggested that working-class culture was under assault by political elites afflicted with "Mary Poppins syndrome - they won't rest until Britons are practically perfect in every way".

The institute's target was health paternalism: "Today, it's sufficient for public health toffs to simply utter the dreaded 'u' word - unhealthy - and pleasures of whatever pedigree are doomed."

A common weapon used by the kind of people who don't smoke against the kind of people who do smoke is that cigarettes are expensive. The blogosphere is outraged when people on benefits, in particular, spend their money on cigarettes and booze.

During the Great Depression, George Orwell wrote about the curious fact that consumption of cheap luxuries was rising despite widespread poverty. The rich, he said, had other ways to soothe and reward themselves. For the poor, it didn't get much better than a bag of chips.

"The peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't . . . When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you."

Orwell was writing about food, rather than cigarettes, but I thought of him when I read in this newspaper last week of a young woman on the minimum wage. Smoking was, she said, her "one little joy".

- © Fairfax NZ News