We have all heard some good stories from the tobacco industry about how tobacco control legislation will wreck a country's thriving economy overnight, throw millions of people out of work, and usher in a long, dark era of totalitarianism. We have been warned about the imminent collapse of the health services, not from the burden of disease caused by tobacco, but from the loss of smokers paying all that tax, then selflessly laying down their lives for their country before they needed to draw their pensions. Mass arrests and torture are evidently just round the corner for those hapless citizens who choose to practise any innocent and pleasurable pastimes in lands where tyrannical politicians have banned tobacco promotion.

In …