«Resist the tobacco Taliban»
Unter dem Titel «Resist the tobacco Taliban» ist in der heutigen Sunday Times ein sehr bemerkenswerter Kommentar wider den Anti-Tabak-Fanatismus zu lesen. Auslöser für die Stellungnahme wider den Verbots-Wahnsinn (resp. die «tobacco Taliban») in der renommierten Zeitung ist das Ansinnen, das Rauchverbot in England auch auf Aussenräume zu erweitern. Einige Sätze aus dem Kommentar:
The risk incurred by standing next to a smoker for five minutes in a bus shelter must be vanishingly small, far smaller than damage caused by traffic pollution.
It has been seriously argued that groups of smokers puffing away on pavements might cause terrified non-smoking pedestrians to step outside into the road where they could be killed by a car.
It may well come to that — because the sort of people who populate Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) simply cannot stop themselves; they will agitate for more and more legislation because that is the only reason for their existence.
Smokers are a convenient and politically correct target for those who wish to take out their inchoate anger but are sharp enough to realise that, these days, you can’t vent it on Jews or homosexuals.
