The World of Chocolate

Once upon a time, in a galaxy... well, you know the rest of that!

Anyway, on this other world, chocolate was the first sweet food to become popular. Indeed, many residents of that world became addicted to the stuff. This resulted in health warnings and a form of taxation called "duty". It was a good word, suggesting that addicts and other consumers of chocolate were "doing their duty" as a form of penance for their predilection by paying extra for it.

Later, other sweet foods became more widely known, and still others newly came into being. Liquorice, boiled sweets, and many others started to enter the public arena.

The chocolate producers didn't like this, as it was (literally!) eating into their profits. They told the government of the day, who by then had become significantly dependant upon the payment of "chocolate duty", that these competitors for the sweet market were now starting to threaten the levels of duty that the government would be getting. The government responded that they would impose duty on those other sweets, thus compensating for that loss by generating it from sales of those products.

Ah, by the chocolate-producing cartel indicated, there are all those other things we have been doing for you; and ours is a single, solid source of dependable income. Who knows which way this fragmented market of comparatively minor sweets will go? It puts too many variables in the way, and all could collapse. No, we, the chocolate providers, are the only solid enough basis for sweet duty revenue to be maintained at the level government expects and (now) needs.

As all sweets are potentially harmful, it was decided to use that as a reason to ban all sweets as "drugs", except chocolate which was well-established and was causing no particularly great problem to society and health. Indeed, there were (well-devised) arguments that suggested that any issues attributed to chocolate were more likely caused by something else anyway. It was all circumstantial...

Thus, all sweets were outlawed apart from chocolate, which had an effective monopoly. To ensure that as far as possible, severe penalties were introduced by the government for use and (even more so) for supplying other sweets on the black market.

Eventually it came out that the sweet industry and the government had in fact been aware that chocolate was more harmful and more addictive than many (though not all) of the other sweets, but that this information had been hidden from the public for decades. It then became necessary for restrictions to be placed on the age range to which chocolate could be sold, where it could be consumed, and written health warnings were placed on its packaging.

The chocolate suppliers and the government's Treasury had to take the hit, but kept the legal monopoly of their chosen product.


Now switch to Planet Earth, and substitute tobacco for chocolate. The pattern is almost identical, admittedly aided by the Kings Cross fire that resulted in a smoking ban on the London Underground, but otherwise very similar. I can't be certain that we got here by exactly the same route, but the result is much the same. Remember, though, that chocolate doesn't really have fumes as such, and what it does have isn't all that unpleasant either.

It was about fifteen years ago that the cover-up about tobacco being a hard drug more carcinogenic than many of the outlawed drugs, and demonstrably (it has been done, in fact) more addictive even than heroin. There were at the time one or two well-evidenced TV documentaries covering aspects of what I have just written.

On Planet Earth, in many nations including Britain, it is tobacco that has the legal monopoly by the outlawing of all its competition. That is corrupt law, by definition! Either all actual drugs should be allowed or they should all be banned, not decided by a pick-and-choose approach according to some convenient criterion along the lines of: "Oh, but tobacco doesn't have such-and-such an effect". It interferes with thinking within seven seconds, so yes it does have bad effects, and that's all one needs to know.

Therefore, on the basis that the other drugs were banned for "genuine" reasons (and no government would find it easy to admit it was all a big mistake, after what they've been claiming for decades), and with the ready availability of substitute "patches", tobacco now needs to be banned completely, achieving equity at long last.

Although, once I was old enough, and in those distant times of broad public ignorance, I did try cigars and a pipe for a while (really as a scientific study and writing up my findings) and one cigar-ette (how tiddly, twee, effeminate and frankly wimpish those things are, and with nothing to them by comparison with real cigars), once that was done I just stopped. I had done the necessary, and could handle the topic with personal knowledge and not through ignorance.

Nowadays, of course, and especially since those (unwanted by some!) revelations in the mid-nineties, there is no excuse for bothering with tobacco products at all. There is not a single positive or worthwhile thing about them. None!

(Older generations have perhaps a partial excuse of ignorance about the true nature of tobacco, but by now surely they must have long realised how vile it all is and done something about it?)

They make you filthy on the inside and stink on the outside. No-one with an ounce of self-respect would habitually allow themselves to be compromised in that way, and certainly not in company. No-one with any integrity would allow themselves to be compromised by being effectively "bought" by the drug companies (which is what the tobacco producers are, just as much as any other) so that they put their own selfishness about the general good.

And make no mistake: there is no-one in the world more selfish than a drug addict, especially a tobacco addict. Nothing can be allowed to come between an addict and his/her increasingly desperate need for the next "fix". Watch their behaviour. The first thing they do when leaving a clean area, say going outdoors, is light up, regardless of any company who will have the addict's fumes inflicted on them without the slightest consideration. The rest of us don't count to an addict: we are of far lower importance than the "fix"!

They are owned by the drug, and by extension its providers, and are entirely dependant upon the corrupt law that permits its sale while banning all others. As would be judged the case in any other, equivalent scenario, they have therefore been compromised, every single one of them without exception!

That is why the restrictions we now have became necessary in the forms that they are today, and how they evolved and extended their coverage over the years.

One can see why the Hundred of Hoo School students went on their "ciggy busting" operation, as has been reported in the local media. Apparently this was in support of the NHS's Smoke-free Medway campaign.

I don't really go along with such things, especially as it makes the addicts even more self-protective and militant and could easily end up being counter-productive; but as I commented (I can't recall where) a few days ago, it was interesting to have someone impose upon the addicts for a change, instead of the other way around as is the norm.

So, a total ban on tobacco products must come fairly soon, unless someone can come up with a viable alternative. At least there are nicotine patches as a replacement, and e-cigarettes are another possibility (and duty can be charged on both of those, to compensate for loss of government revenue), which is more than the poor folk on the World of Chocolate would have if their only legal "drug" were someday to be banned...

Oh, if anyone tries to interpret this article as being "intolerant" or "nasty", I am showing only that I do not like corrupt and genuinely discriminatory (unlike the Harman stuff) laws, I do not like being assaulted by unpleasant chemicals; and if the boot were on the other foot you can be sure that the addicts would be among those complaining if they were to be imposed upon by something they didn't like.

By keeping to independently checkable facts, and by merely extrapolating the current trend of restriction anyway, as well as speaking for millions of sufferers (again!), I can hardly be sensibly attacked for writing truth. Any such attempt will be sure to backfire.