www.forestonline.org

l  Tuesday 11 March 2003

Smokers are ‘not fulfilling their potential
as human beings’ says anti-smoking peer

On the eve of No Smoking Day, a leading peer has hit out at smokers, arguing that

‘They are not fulfilling their potential as human beings.’

Lord Laird of Artigarvan, a former Ulster Unionist MP, said, ‘How can people operate to the maximum of their ability when they are continually working out little ploys to get outside for a tobacco break?

‘Smokers,’ he added, ‘are the nicest people in terms of their personality but their packaging and presentation is all wrong … We must set them free. We must cut them from the shackles of the nicotine weed. They cannot reach their full potential otherwise.’

Responding to his fellow peer, Lord Harris, chairman of FOREST (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco), said he was alarmed at Lord Laird’s ‘certainty of being right’.

‘A lot of people fulfil themselves through sucking at their pipes or smoking their fags. It’s part of their personality … I sometimes feel about heavy drinkers the way you do about smokers. It’s not for me. But the idea that I would want to characterise them as beyond the pale is preposterous.’

The exchange is part of a No Smoking Day debate published today on the new FOREST website, forestonline.org.

Laird said smokers are ‘socially excluding’ themselves. He also criticised women who smoke. ‘I’ll tell you an oxymoron: an attractive female smoker. How can you have a girl go to all the trouble to put on nice perfume and then smell like a stale ashtray?’

Simon Clark, director of FOREST, ‘He has obviously never met Kate Moss or Sophie Dahl! Lord Laird means well, but the idea that smokers should be treated as social outcasts is reminiscent of the Middle Ages. If anyone is to be socially excluded it should be fanatical anti-smokers who are unrepresentative of society at large.’

For further comment contact FOREST on 07071 766537 and/or John Laird on 02890 471282

FOREST’s No Smoking Day press pack, including the full debate between Lord Harris and Lord Laird, our No Smoking Day fantasy guest list, an article by Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas and a regular panellist on Radio 4’s The Moral Maze, quotes about smoking, and the 2003 FOREST Awards, can be found on FOREST Online (www.forestonline.org).