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    The Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco
                            
                            Viewpoints No. 8
                            
                        THE NEW UNHAPPY PURITANS
                        
                           By Piers Merchant
                           
FOREST is supported by voluntary donations from smokers, non-smokers and 
by Britain's free enterprise tobacco companies.  This campaign is not 
funded by taxpayers.  Details of how to subscribe to FOREST are 
available from the address below.
                                 FOREST
      Freedom Organisation For The Right To Enjoy Smoking Tobacco
                2 Grosvenor Gardens      London SW1W ODH
               
               Tel: (071) 823 6550    Fax: (071) 823 4534        
                  
                  Chairman:  Lord Harris of High Cross
                        Director:  Chris R. Tame
                  Campaign Manager:  Majorie Nicholson
                          
                          ISBN  1 871833 33 7
                
                Copyright: FOREST; Piers Merchant, 1992
                          All rights reserved.
The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and not 
necessarily those of FOREST.
Piers Merchant is Public Affairs Director for the Advertising 
Association. A former MP for Newcastle Central he is currently 
Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Beckenham.   He has been 
Director of one of Britain's largest heavy-engineering firms, News 
Editor of a leading regional newspaper, and Joint President of the 
Freeflow of Information Committee of the International Parliamentary 
Group on Human Rights.
This paper was first delivered as a speech to the FOREST Conference "Risk, 
Freedom and Paternalism", 7 March, 1992.
      
      FREEDOM ORGANISATION FOR THE RIGHT TO ENJOY SMOKING TOBACCO
      
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                        THE NEW UNHAPPY PURITANS
                           By Piers Merchant
Yesterday I received a long letter and a colour brochure from the League 
Against Cruel Sports asking me to support a total ban on hunting.  Now I 
happen to dislike hunting and could never take part; indeed I find any 
cruelty to animals deeply upsetting.  To anyone with these views my 
credentials are impeccable - indeed a good deal more impeccable than 
most of them.  I have been a vegetarian, out of conviction, since I was 
six.  But, despite this, I do not support a hunting ban - any more than 
I would try to force my vegetarianism on anyone else.
I am also not a smoker; indeed I actively dislike smoking.  But I am not 
in the business of forcing others to stop by banning the product or its 
advertisements.
Neither do I drink, except the smallest amount on the rarest of 
occasions.  However I would not dream of interfering in the rights of 
others themselves to seek enjoyment through drinking.
The matter that should deeply disturb all lovers of liberty is that a 
growing band of Big Brothers want to ban, restrict and regulate in all 
those areas.
After my confessions, you will probably conclude that I am a pretty 
boring character.  No doubt a food crank who reads the latest literature 
about the latest risk; who has always used a seat-belt; who refuses to 
live on credit; who reads the small print on the labels and the details 
in the guarantees.
I plead guilty.
But this is my choice on how I want to live my life.  It has not been 
imposed on me; it is not a compact with others, a life-style self 
regulation; it is a free choice.  That is my right as an Englishman.
You might, however, think my profile matches that of the archetypal 
Puritan and you probably would not be far wrong.  For I also believe in 
the virtues of work, thrift, integrity and individual choice - the 
Protestant ethic.
So why, you might wonder, am I here today, in this den of vice, rubbing 
shoulders with the elite of bon viveurs and mixing with those who might 
deem themselves the world's most self-satisfied health self-abusers?
Liberty
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