New anti-smoking campaign in Fremantle

Just learned of a new anti-smoking campaign in Freo. It utilizes cardboard cut-outs of smokers furtively puffing away and exhorts them to "stop hiding" and "start quitting".

While this is a refreshingly different angle from all those gruesome photos on durry packets, the annoyingly sanctimonious tone still comes through loud and clear.

If the smokers are hiding, why is that? In major part because they feel hounded by the anti-smoking lobby, that's why! But the same lobby is blaming them for that very reaction.

There's something a bit totalitarian about this. It's like punching someone and saying, "Oh look, you've got a black eye! Better get that covered with make-up or you'll scare people. Really, how antisocial of you!"

I'm not a smoker myself. But I do find the sheer intensity and relentlessness of the campaign waged against them pretty disturbing.

Hell, there are many other things that are bad for your health that haven't been given such a full on, publicly funded shellacking. Although I suppose the health fascists are intending to get to them eventually, too ... 

And that's what worries me. They never give up, and just keep on expanding their reach.

I'd rather live in a society in which people are free to make their own decisions about their health -- even stupid ones -- than one in which everyone is living on mung beans and rain water out of sheer terror.