By Blad Tolstoy
Now it's the drinkers' turn to come under the hammer. At the beginning of the week, Harpers announced the formation of a new "Alliance" between the BBC and several "leading" health organisations to counter the damage done by demon drink.
These health organisations include: The Royal College of Physicians, which will chair the Alliance, Action on Addiction, Alcohol and Health Research Trust, College of Emergency Medicine, Institute of Alcohol Studies, The Royal College of General Practitioners, Royal College of Nursing and The Royal College of Surgeons.
Ha, ha, what a field day they'll all have as they come up with lots of new alcohol negative studies - whilst getting lots of publicly funded grants - in order to give drinkers a hard time. People are already aware of the proposed restrictions on alcohol consumption touted recently but we know that all of this is just the start. We know, because for example, many of our associates pay regular visits to the website of the Robert Wood-Johnson Foundation (RWJF). This is the "charitable" arm of the pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson and this wonderful philanthropical body is now spending as much money buying public health and university research departments to promote alcohol prohibition as they do on anti-smoking propaganda. This is easy to discover as American "not-for-profits" must publish whom they sponsor and searches around the RWJF website will reveal all anyone needs to know. In addition, the EU has already been making all sorts of noises about tighter alcohol controls and warning labels on bottles and cans of booze are expected soon.
Now let me make it clear, as a dedicated pro-choice activist and anti-prohibitionist I do not want to start giving drinkers a hard time. But, I had to laugh at the squeals of that sectionof the non-smoking drinking community who, to date, have thought they are so superior to smokers. "Oh," they pompously assert, "unless you pour my beer/glass of wine down someone else's throat, then my drinking doesn't affect anyone else, not like nasty old cigarette smoke."
To these idiots I have to say: "Take this test. Go out on a cold day and breathe out. You will see just how far your breath travels. When you've been drinking your breath travels into the immediate environment in the same way. Just because in warmer locations you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there!" Nothing worse too, I shall add, than standing in the queue at Tescos and having the person in front of you hawk their booze soaked breath in your mush either!Incidentally, ethanol, the active ingredient in all alcoholic beverages, is a Class "A" carcinogen too.
So these people need to learn about tolerance and being much less self righteous. If they learn that lesson they might find that smokers are very supportive because we've learnt to fight and are becoming stronger and more vociferous by the day.
Welcome to the club, boozers!
