Read Joe Jackson’s
Smoke, Lies And The Nanny State
Post-Punk Icon Joe Jackson on the Nanny State, Smoking Bans, and His Next Musical Adventure
Posted By Reason TV?
November 10, 2011
“A smoking ban in bars is saying that adult citizens are not allowed to use a legal substance even though they’re very highly taxed for doing so in a place that is private property,” explains Joe Jackson [1], the hitmeister behind indelible tunes such as ”Look Sharp!,” “Is She Really Going Out With Him?,” and, yes, “(Everything Gives You) Cancer.”
Jackson’s not a smoker himself but he insists that smoking bans and other for-your-own-good restrictions infantalize us all and challenge basic concepts of freedom. “You’re throwing out the window the property right of the owner of that establishment, freedom of choice, a lot of things, compared to a health risk [from second- and third-hand smoke] that is really unproven.”
Jackson’s antipathy for the creeping nanny state in his native England and his longtime home of New York City led him to write a meticulously researched essay called “Smoking, Lies and The Nanny State [2].” It also led him to finally flee New York and London, setting up residence in Berlin because there he at least feels like he is relatively “free” and “treated like an adult.”
Jackson sat down with Reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie and talked about his frustrations as an anti-smoking ban activist, the “gathering storm of prohibitionism,” and the bold and risky evolutions of his signature musical style over the years.
Ten reasons why the smoking ban stinks
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Wednesday, July 7, 2010
By Joe Jackson
(1) It disregards property rights. The air in a pub ‘belongs’ neither to smokers nor nonsmokers, and certainly not to politicians, but to the publican, and it is the publican who should decide the smoking policy on his or her own premises.
(2) It sets a terrible precedent by blurring the boundary between public and private. A law court is a ‘public place’ – a nightclub is not, and neither politicians nor doctors have the right to legislate what people do in it. If we concede to them that right, they will inevitably extend it to our cars (as they are now trying to do) and then to our homes (which has already happened in parts of the US).
(3) It removes freedom of choice – not only the smoker’s freedom to enjoy a legal habit, but everyone’s freedom to work out their own compromises and solutions.
(4) It is anti-democratic. The government’s own Office for National Statistics found 68% opposed to a total ban, but like every other smoking ban in the world, it was imposed regardless. The only opinions which have been heard are those of medical authorities and lobby groups, and directly or indirectly, the pharmaceutical companies which fund them.
(5) It is socially divisive and encourages intolerance. Government is blatantly stigmatising a particular group, who must change their behaviour or be excluded from ‘correct’ society (a recent NHS campaign used the slogan ‘If you smoke, you stink’). Well-intentioned or not, antismoking authorities have created tremendous animosity between friends, neighbours and family members. They have also encouraged people to think that government can, or should, intervene to stop other people doing whatever they personally don’t approve of.
(6) It is hypocritical, since tobacco remains legal and the Treasury makes around ?10 billion per year from taxing it. And, incidentally, there is a smoker-friendly bar in the House of Commons.
(7) Despite ever more frantic and contrived efforts to ‘prove’ otherwise, it is bad for business. Pubs and clubs are dying, and although the ban may not be the only factor, few people in the trade would deny that it’s a significant one.
(8) It is technologically backward, since it is not difficult, with decent modern air filtration, to make smoke virtually unnoticeable, and certainly harmless.
(9) It does not stop people smoking. Even if we find it appropriate in the first place to ban smoking in pubs in order to pressure people into quitting, it doesn’t work. In many countries smoking rates have risen since bans have been imposed.
(10) Finally, and most importantly, the government claims to be setting aside all these considerations in order to tackle a deadly health threat:
‘secondhand smoke’. But there is no actual proof that even one person has died from this phantom menace. After 40 years of studies, antismokers can still only produce computer projections based on dubious statistics, and ‘relative risk ratios’ which sound scary but mean nothing in the real world. That’s why we see, for instance, posters telling us that tobacco smoke contains various nasty-sounding chemicals, without mentioning that they are present only at infinitesimal, harmless levels.
If we accept that such feeble evidence justifies a smoking ban, we are setting the level of acceptable risk so low as to justify banning just about everything else, too: cooking (which produces carcinogens), candles, incense, open fires, perfume, etc. Thousands of products, from household cleaners to cosmetics, contain higher levels of toxic chemicals than tobacco – and are still harmless.
Ultimately, the problem here goes way beyond ‘to smoke or not to smoke’. There is a worrying general trend towards more and more intrusive legislation, justified by more and more dishonest and misleading junk science and fearmongering. (Typical of this are recent claims that the continuation of a long-term decline in heart attacks is ‘caused by’ smoking bans, and the invention of a new threat, ‘thirdhand smoke,’ on the basis of no scientific evidence whatsoever).
What’s needed is not just the repeal of the smoking ban and other petty, oppressive laws, but a return to healthy scepticism, fairness, and common sense.
A dozen reasons to stub out the smoking ban
Tuesday 20 July 2010
by Joe Jackson for Spiked Magazine
A smokers’ guide to Europe and beyond
April 7, 2008
Musician Joe Jackson is currently on a world tour promoting his new album. In the second of two articles on Forest’s Free Society blog, he reports from Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Israel and the UK.
Health and safety uber alles!
3/17/08
Musician Joe Jackson is currently on tour promoting his new album.
“In my hometown, Portsmouth,” he writes on the Free Society blog today, “I saw NO SMOKING signs in bus stops and car parks, and no less than five signs in a phone box …
“It was the same story in the rehearsal room just outside town where we prepared for the tour. The signage screamed at us even in the toilets. DO NOT THROW PAPER INTO THE URINALS. I wonder how many people go into a cubicle to get some paper, use it for God knows what, and then try to stuff it down a hole into which it obviously cannot fit.
“Meanwhile, in the cubicle: PLEASE FLUSH THE TOILET BEFORE LEAVING. Now, I’ve known to do this since I was maybe three, but perhaps I’m unusual.
Full Article
3/17/08
Musician Joe Jackson is currently on tour promoting his new album.
“In my hometown, Portsmouth,” he writes on the Free Society blog today, “I saw NO SMOKING signs in bus stops and car parks, and no less than five signs in a phone box …
“It was the same story in the rehearsal room just outside town where we prepared for the tour. The signage screamed at us even in the toilets. DO NOT THROW PAPER INTO THE URINALS. I wonder how many people go into a cubicle to get some paper, use it for God knows what, and then try to stuff it down a hole into which it obviously cannot fit.
“Meanwhile, in the cubicle: PLEASE FLUSH THE TOILET BEFORE LEAVING. Now, I’ve known to do this since I was maybe three, but perhaps I’m unusual.
Full Article
Smoke, lies and the nanny state
1 May 2007
Grammy award-winning musician Joe Jackson, a member of FOREST’s Supporters Council, is best known for hits such as ‘Is She Really Going Out With Him?’, ‘It’s Different For Girls’ and ‘Steppin’ Out’. In 1999 he wrote A Cure For Gravity, “a book about music thinly disguised as a memoir”, and in 2000 he won a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Album for the non-orchestral Symphony No.1.
BORN in England, Joe lived in New York for 20 years from 1983 to 2003, when he returned to London. A ‘social smoker’, Joe has researched the subject of smoking in depth and in 2004 wrote a widely-read essay, ‘The Smoking Issue’, which was printed and distributed by FOREST to MPs, journalists and broadcasters. Joe has also written articles on the subject for the New York Times, Daily Telegraph and Guardian, among others.
An outspoken opponent of smoking bans, Joe has given valuable support to FOREST, lending his name to countless initiatives. In 2004, for example, he wrote a letter to The Times: signatories included Bob Geldof, Stephen Fry, Lisa Stansfield and Chris Tarrant, plus FOREST supporters Antony Worrall Thompson, Ronald Harwood, Felix Dennis and Trevor Baylis.
Living and working in Berlin since January 2007, Joe has substantially updated ‘The Smoking Issue’ and the new version, called? ‘Smoke, Lies and the Nanny State’, is available now. He writes:
“I’ve unravelled reams of statistics, met with doctors and academics, and networked with scores of other researchers and activists who are trying to get at the truth. I’m now convinced that the dangers of smoking – and particularly ‘passive’ smoking – are greatly exaggerated for reasons which have more to do with politics, power and profit than objective science.
“I believe the antismoking movement, especially lobby groups like ASH, has far too much money and influence. Their dishonesty and bullying tactics should be troubling even to tobacco-haters, yet the mainstream media seem mostly paralysed by political correctness and a troubling lack of scepticism towards anything done in the name of health.
“Why don’t they point out there is not one documented case of ‘secondhand smoke’ being proven to cause death? Perhaps journalists could explain that a ‘25% increased risk’ from ‘secondhand smoke’ is actually a statistically-insignificant increase on an already insignificant risk. Antismokers dodge these issues every time and now claim that the debate is over.
“The phenomenal success of the anti-smoking movement over the last seven or eight years corresponds directly to phenomenal infusions of cash from the Master Settlement Agreement between the tobacco companies and the American states, and from the World Health Organisation going into partnership with the pharmaceutical industry which wants the world’s billion and a half smokers off fags and onto nicotine patches and antidepressants.
“I was talking to my mum the other day. She can’t understand so much fuss about things which to her, having grown up in the Second World War, seem so trivial. Now we’re being told to be scared of infinitesimal amounts of benzene in ‘secondhand smoke’. What planet am I on? Can someone beam me up?!!”
Attention Smokers!
07/01/2007 – A total smoking ban in England comes into effect as of July 1st. Read this new article.>
07/01/2007 – A total smoking ban in England comes into effect as of July 1st. Read this new article.>
Dear Smokers,
You are the scum of the earth. Bad enough that you are intent on committing suicide, but with your noxious fumes you are committing nothing less than murder too.
The preceding statement should sound pretty familiar by now. If you believe it, don’t bother to read any further. But if you’re skeptical, consider this: you’re being made into scapegoats by people who are nowhere near as honest and noble as is commonly assumed. In fact a lot of them are downright nasty, and it’s about time you started standing up to them.
Read More!? http://www.joejackson.com/news.php?id=80&m;=07&y;=2007
You are the scum of the earth. Bad enough that you are intent on committing suicide, but with your noxious fumes you are committing nothing less than murder too.
The preceding statement should sound pretty familiar by now. If you believe it, don’t bother to read any further. But if you’re skeptical, consider this: you’re being made into scapegoats by people who are nowhere near as honest and noble as is commonly assumed. In fact a lot of them are downright nasty, and it’s about time you started standing up to them.
Read More!? http://www.joejackson.com/news.php?id=80&m;=07&y;=2007
Don’t stop the party
Musician Joe Jackson has published an open letter to all smokers on his website (www.joejackson.com).
“Smokers need to know the true facts. The more we know, the better we can fight back. Do not allow yourself to be bullied. Do not? apologise to anyone. On the contrary, explain to people why you’re a victim of unjust discrimination. You are enjoying a legal pleasure with a long and honourable history, and you’re contributing ?10 billion a year to your country in tax revenue. Be proud.
“Bad laws deserve to be defied, flouted, protested, or circumvented in any way possible … The smoking ban will not last forever. But the less resistance there is, the longer it will last, the more the ‘antis’ will crow about what a great success it is, and the more it will serve as a template for all kinds of other social engineering. Every witch hunt seems invincible until a few people have the nerve to stand up to it. Stop being so damn passive. And don’t despair; after all, we (not the likes of ASH) are the Party People. Don’t stop the party.”
To comment on this or other freedom-related issues, go to:
http://takingliberties.squarespace.com
http://www.forestonline.org
http://takingliberties.squarespace.com
http://www.forestonline.org
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