Iceland's cigarettes-on-prescription plan needs to be stubbed out

So apparently an Icelandic health minister is planning to make the sale of cigarettes illegal, and only allow smokers to procure their poison after being prescribed them by doctors. It probably won't happen, but this is the kind of story that punches above its weight, for it allows the health advocates and the libertarians to get into a massive argument, with the arguments generating plenty of heat (or should that be smoke?) but little light. Which is a shame, really, because each side has much to commend itself. The only problem is that they won't listen to each other.

Those who have seen my previous writings on smoking-related issues will know where I stand: outside, shivering and coughing with the smokers. Strangely enough, it was not always thus. But there is something about being told what to do that rankles, and when news of the forthcoming smoking ban was announced, I took up the habit again just so I could have a few more months of sitting in a smoke-filled pub. Four years later, I have yet to stop again.

Which is, of course, bad for me, but not, I think, bad of me. Others would insist that it is indeed very bad of me, what with all the proven data about secondhand smoke; but I am not sure that the data convinces me. This kind of thing can be cherry-picked, and you can say that smoking contributes far more in taxation than it costs society, or exactly the opposite, depending on how you massage the figures.

I have seen the human cost of smoking at first hand. No longer do I think it witty to quote Frederick the Great's exasperated cry to his retreating troops, "Dogs! Would you live for ever?" I have seen the most ghastly effects of cancer and do not need to be reminded that they exist.

But these are not automatic, and everyone can now make an informed choice, or a more informed choice than they used to. (Although I concede that at the age when many people start, they are unlikely to be in a position where they can make informed choices. This is why people drive slower and slower as they get older. The dangerous consequences of driving faster become more vivid to them.)

And surely capitalist, neoliberal governments are now cold-hearted enough to make an actuarial assessment of the dangers of the habit? If it takes, on average, seven years off your life (and, as a character of Martin Amis's novel The Pregnant Widow puts it, these seven years aren't the really cool ones between 28 and 35), then that is seven years' healthcare, pension and free bus rides the state no longer has to worry about. (And, unless I give up soon, I will be sparing my children the crippling burden of the care home.) Moreover, there is the matter of enormous tax revenue to take into account.

No, the problem is that there are simply some people – no, many people – who do not like the idea of people smoking at all, and the impression one gets that if it were not smoking which were the issue here, it would be something else with them, like eating chocolate, or masturbating, or some other common but unedifying pleasure. I once asked a doctor at a party whether she would still seek to ban the habit even if there were an almost costless one-a-day pill one could take which would negate every single adverse side-effect. I was much struck by the speed with which she said "yes". I was going to ask "why?" but saw a look in her face which made me think better of it. How, I wondered, could someone so notionally in favour of good health look so frighteningly toxic?