Smoking, cars and quack science

Anti-smoking fanatics are celebrating today because it's now a crime to smoke around people under the age of 18 in cars. The issue of secondhand smoke in vehicles is utterly trivial and the immense effort that has gone into this political campaign only makes sense when you understand that it is about setting a precedent for banning smoking in private, domestic environments.

Obviously, the 'public health' charlatans don't care about children any more than they care about bar-workers. All they care about is using state force to stop people smoking. Equally obviously, it won't end here.

It's worth remembering that this is Labour legislation and Labour's shadow health secretary is quite rightly taking the credit for it. Ten years after they last won an election, the Labour party is still passing legislation through the unelected House of Lords. They did exactly the same thing with plain packaging. A tax on plastic bags in coming into effect next week. Labour, Tory, it makes no difference. Nanny always wins.

From the outset, the campaign to ban smoking in cars has required Lysenko science. At one point it got so bad that even the British Meddling Association had to retract a sciency claim. And the junk keeps on coming. Take this factoid from the useful idiots at the BBC, for example...

Smoke can stay in the air for up to two and a half hours even with a window open

You have to wonder what the BBC defines as "smoke" and whether they've ever been in a moving vehicle. Or a stationary vehicle, for that matter.

It seems that people will believe in anything when it comes to secondhand smoke. Newcastle University put out a press release today which contains this gem...

“People think that by opening the window they are clearing the air, but what actually happens is the air is sucked in from outside and pushes the smoke backwards, straight towards the passengers in the back seat."

Don't you love the way cars defy the laws of physics by sucking air in without blowing air out? What are they, black holes?

The manner in which academics are prepared to degrade themselves in the pursuit of money and ideology is pathetic, but expect more of the same in the future. Who knows what new magical properties secondhand smoke will be found to have. Perhaps they'll even try to revive the 'thirdhand smoke' scam? As the political objectives become more and more draconian, there are always new depths to plunge.