H:Did you have an interesting chat with Dr Thorne?

J:Yes .He proposed the elimination of smoking.

H:Ha hahaha....By a campaign of mass hypnosis perhaps!

J:By raising tobacco taxes sky high and simultaneously banning all advertising.

H:Ha hahaha....

J:I think his position is admirably moral.

H:Moral perhaps,but extremely silly.No man in his right mind could contemplate such a proposel.

J:I'm contemplating it.

H:Yes of course,Prime Minister.Please don't misunderstand me.

It is quite right that you should CONTEMPLATE all proposals.
but no sane man would ever SUPPORT it.

J:I'm supporting it.

H:And quite right too,Prime Minister.

The only problem is that the tax is a major source of revenue for the government.

J:And a major source of death form diseases.

H:Yes,but no definite cousative link has ever been proved, has it?

J:The statistics..You can prove anything with statistics.Even the truth.

H:Yes..No!

J:It say here,"Smoking-rekated diseases cost the NHS?65 million a year."

H;Yes but we've been into that.

It has been shown that if those extra 100000 people had lived to ripe old age,

they would have cost us even more in pensions and social security than they did in medical treatment.

So financially speaking, it's unquestionably better that they continue to die at about the present rate.

J:When cholera killed 30000 people in 1833,we got the Public Health Act.

when smog killed 2500 people in 1952,we got the Clean Air Act.

A commercial dyug kills half a dozen people and we get ir withdrawn form sale.

Cigarettes kill 100000 people a year and what do we get?

H:4,000,000,000 pounds a year.