Smoking ban in prison leads to usual outcome

If you could go back in a time machine to the year 2000, let alone the year 1980, what would people make of the following passage from this news story?

Dr Goodwin was on Wednesday asked in Parliament if she would reconsider the smoking ban if it proved to be a key motivation behind the siege.

She said the government would not back down.

"We're not in the business of giving in to the demands of prisoners for things and conceding that a hostage action was appropriate," she said.

"To suggest that we should now turn around and say it's all too hard and give up because the prisoners don't like it [the tobacco ban] is not realistic."

Dr Goodwin said there was no excuse for assaulting or taking a prison guard hostage.

"I am most concerned that there would be any suggestion we should just simply reverse a policy because there's been a hostage situation.

They would think that we had lost our minds, wouldn't they? And they would be right.

As usual, people who work in the prison system predicted that this would happen months ago. As usual, the 'public health' lobbyists said it wouldn't.

And let's not forget this gem from Deborah Arnott:

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of charity Action on Smoking and Health, said there was no evidence to support claims that depriving prisoners of tobacco could lead to riots.

*splutter*