Smoking, NICE...

Talking of madness... Reports of 'Number Ten' being about to U-turn into going full steam ahead towards plain packaging for cigarettes reminded me of this once-popular brand - attractively priced, I seem to remember, for the schoolboy pocket. Apparently, obliterating most of today's cigarette packets with the words 'Smoking Kills' and lurid pictures of diseased lungs is seen in some quarters as being as good as saying 'Come on, kids - you're never too young to smoke!' So plain packaging it must be.
  This 'news' coincided with more pressure from the amusingly named NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) to ban patients and staff alike from smoking (or indeed facilitating smoking) anywhere in the vicinity of an NHS hospital - and, if staff insist on smoking, they must change out of their uniforms. Happily NHS staff - especially nurses, many of whom subsist largely on fags, tea and chocs - will never stand for this, but I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to foist a total smoking ban on patients. As if they weren't suffering enough, and as if it would make the slightest bit of difference to their health. If NICE genuinely cared about patients, they would never contemplate such a thing - and if they're worried about patients' health and wellbeing they should focus their attention on the notoriously uneatable and unhealthy food doled out (and mostly left uneaten) in NHS hospitals. Meanwhile, the anti-smoking wowsers inch ever closer to what they really want - a total ban on smoking, by anyone, anywhere.