Do-gooder turned libertarian?

Everyone changes their views over time, some more so than others. One example is perhaps Times columnist Melanie Reid, who has greeted this week's proposal to extend the smoking ban with a degree of hostility, which seems at odds with her reaction to the initial prohibition relating to enclosed public spaces such as pubs and restaurants. Thus presumably Ms Reid has moved from what she now calls a 'do-gooder' to someone of a more libertarian bent. Or perhaps consenting adults in pubs are more deserving of the nanny state than kids in the back of a car. Anyway, peruse the following and decide. Or, better still, read her 2007 article in its entirety then take a look at her perspective this morning.

2007
So clean is the air now, that being exposed to the smell of cigarettes is a physical shock. I do not exaggerate.

When you pass someone smoking in the street, or meet someone who has just had a cigarette, you recoil at the smell from their clothes and their breath. Incredible to think that we all, as smokers, used to smell like that: and never noticed. We used to kiss each other too! Today, given the sensory shift that has taken place over the past year, it feels quite offensive: an unwelcome whiff from some grim past.

2010
Of all the different kinds of harm that can be inflicted on a child in the home, passive smoking would seem to be low on the list. Certainly, compared with having parents who are absent, drunk, inject drugs, suffer from a very low IQ or dress like Jordan, inhaling cigarette smoke would not seem to be the worst fate for a child.


2007
For a start, there will be no rebellion. All those rumblings you’re hearing about boycotts of pubs, of unrest and civil strife? Fights over the B&H? Of landlords defying the law? Forget it. Those are but the defiant mutterings of a defeated army, beginning the long retreat from Moscow. There will be no trouble at all. The smokers, meek as lambs, will either stand obediently outside or refrain from smoking.[...]

Indeed, instead of lawlessness and hostility, be prepared for the exact opposite: a widespread and generous welcome for the ban, even among confirmed smokers, and an intangible, unquantifiable uplift in the national mood.

Now, not to put too fine a point on it, we all know what the Scottish psyche can be like: chippy, somewhat negative, a little begrudging in spirit. Against all the odds, the smoking ban has had a positive effect. Scotland, for me, feels like a country that’s been to a health farm and come back with a clear complexion, open tubes, and a spring in its step.

How can I pin down why, over such a brief period, this feels like a markedly more modern, fashionable country? Above all, it’s the clean air; the removal of constant pollution in our noses wherever we went. Perhaps too, at a less conscious level, it is a sense of self-worth, of freedom from something rather destructive.

2010
The private lives of vast swaths of the population who have done nothing wrong are invaded as a kind of diversion therapy. We are cannon fodder for the do-gooders who perpetually feel the need to criminalise somebody, even if it’s just for smoking Embassy Regal in the playpark.

This is both irrational and unfair. It’s reached the point where we are all familiar with the feeling that, although the real villains go free, someone is always scheming new ways to catch us out, or ban something, or oblige us to do unnecessary things.