Smoking David Hockney Is a Truer Conservative than Killjoy Rishi Sunak

THE TELEGRAPH: Compulsory clean living isn’t what people vote Tory for. The party needs to rediscover the spirit of Churchill

If smoking has a bullish face, it is painter Sir David Hockney’s. From his farmstead in Normandy, the great man has surfaced to denounce Rishi Sunak’s proposal to ban the sale of cigarettes gradually. This, he says, “is just madness to me. I have smoked for 70 years. I started when I was 16 and I’m now 86 and I’m reasonably fine, thank you. I just love tobacco and I will go on smoking until I fall over.”

Here, I say, is the authentic Conservative spirit. This is a man who has taken on board the health warnings and decided to ignore them all. He has calculated the risks, set them against the benefits and decided that he’s going to carry on with smoking because he likes it and it helps him paint.

As he says defiantly, “Many artists have smoked. Picasso smoked and died at 91, Matisse smoked and died at 84 and Monet chain-smoked and died at 86. He smoked and painted at the same time. I can’t do that. I don’t smoke while I’m painting. I light a cigarette every 15 minutes when I stop to check what I’ve done … Why can’t Mr Sunak leave the smokers alone?” » | Melanie McDonagh | Sunday, October 8, 2023

Artist David Hockney Slams Smoking Ban
YAHOO! NEWS: Artist David Hockney has said he loathes the Labour Government for interfering in his life by introducing the smoking ban.

The 72-year-old lifelong smoker is backing a cross-party group of MPs who want the ban to be relaxed, so people can light up in designated rooms in pubs.

Hockney told the BBC's Politics Show that he was appalled to find that his local cafe in east Yorkshire no longer allowed people to smoke at tables outside, because they were frightened that smoke would waft inside and breach the law.

He said Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his predecessor Tony Blair were responsible and added: "I loathe them for it."

Hockney also took a swipe at the Government's "nanny state attitude", saying that if ministers had told the late TV chef Keith Floyd to give up rich food, alcohol and cigarettes in order to live longer, "he would have said to them that's not what I call living. Up yours! >>> ITN | Sunday, September 20, 2009

David Hockney on Why He Will Always Be Devoted to Cigarettes
GUARDIAN UNLIMITED: On July 1 2007, the most grotesque piece of social engineering will begin in England: the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces, imposed easily by a political and media elite. They think it will lead to healthier people and a cleaner atmosphere. They believe they can change people easily. The science of marketing has been absorbed by them and they think they can control everybody. I don't think they can. People will stay at home and do drugs instead - legal and illegal.

I have lived in California for a number of years. They started smoking bans, but they didn't affect smokers that much. In California you move around in your own private space. If one goes to a public space, say the opera or Disney Hall, then because the climate is ideal the smoker can just step outside, at all times of the year. Many restaurants have gardens and the bans have never really bothered me. But something else has happened in California since the bans came in, unreported by the media, and it took me a while to notice because I have spent the past seven years working in England.

The amount of drugs advertised on television tells me what has replaced tobacco (although 20% still smoke): painkillers, Prozac and antidepressants, mostly prescription drugs - you just tell the doctor what you need. When prescription drugs are advertised in the press there is always a lot of small print listing side effects, and on television you get a speedy talking voice listing the side effects. You perhaps hear one word in four - paralysis, diarrhoea, death, headaches. I expect it all to come here. Drugs (legal and illegal) are the world's largest business, and one can understand why, since they make us feel better. ’I smoke for my mental health’ (more)

Mark Alexander