This week, in the UK, at the Conservative party conference, the British Prime Minister announced an intention to ban the sale of cigarettes - to be achieved by raising the legal age for smoking by one year, every year.
Yes, okay, I don’t argue with the fact that cigarette smoking is a bad idea. It’s bad for the health of both active and passive smokers. It’s smelly and messy. It’s expensive. And yet, although I quit over 20 years ago, I was myself a cigarette smoker for several decades. And I do worry about banning things.
Way back on my 16th birthday, I bought my first packet of cigarettes. I couldn’t wait - as soon as it was legal I was up for it. Smoking, I figured, would somehow raise my level of attractiveness. You know that scene at the start of Casablanca when we are first introduced to Humphrey Bogart as Rick? I thought that was soooo goddam cool.
I lit a cigarette. It was vile. I coughed, retched and turned green. But, come on, you have to persevere. And I did. It took a while but the promise of social inclusion was worth the nausea.
In fairly short order, I was hooked, on both the nicotine and the idea that squinting through a haze of smoke somehow made me irresistibly attractive to any passing female. Idiotic, I know, but the habit did serve a purpose: it seemed to ease day-to-day pressures and calm the mind.
So, should it be banned? I don’t think so. In any case, there has been great success over the past few decades in reducing the smoking of cigarettes. Isn’t that a better way to do it? Currently, around 13 per cent of the UK population smoke. Back when I started, the figure for British men was over 70 per cent.
One issue, it seems to me, is where this may lead. Alcohol also causes ill health and social problems. Will that be next? Perhaps it’s useful for a society to leave one or two legal drugs on sale because, apart from anything else, they provide at least some relief from the pressures of life and, maybe, stop some people resorting to even more dangerous substances? I know, I know, the counter argument to that is that nicotine and alcohol can act as gateway drugs to other substances. Complicated, ain’t it.
When Brothers do Casablanca
Photo: Groucho Marx - NBCU/Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images
I mentioned Humphrey Bogart as a role model when he portrayed Rick in the 1942 movie Casablanca. I assume you’ve seen the film? If not, please do so. It’s the best ever.
A couple of points:
Humphrey Bogart died aged just 57, in 1957, from cancer. Before it spread, the cancer started out in Bogey’s oesophagus, unquestionably triggered by his addiction to smoking and drinking.
When the Marx Brothers were making their movie A Night in Casablanca, Warner Brothers, who, five years earlier, had made Casablanca, threatened them with legal action.
The legal challenge catapulted Groucho Marx into action. (Groucho was, of course, a famous cigar smoker. Are cigars included in the smoking ban? “A Montecristo No. 2, sir. No problem.” That would be rather inequitable, wouldn’t it?) His first letter to Warner Brothers included:
You claim you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without your permission. What about ‘Warner Brothers’? Do you own that, too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as The Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor’s eye …1
Apparently puzzled by this communication, Warner Brothers legal department asked Groucho to outline the story of A Night in Casablanca. Groucho provided a jokey response. When Warner Brothers asked for further clarification, Groucho again took up his pen:
Dear Brothers,
Since I last wrote to you, I regret to say there have been some changes in the plot of our new picture ‘A Night in Casablanca’. In the new version I play Bordello, the sweetheart of Humphrey Bogart. Harpo and Chico are itinerant rug peddlers who are weary of laying rugs and enter a monastery for a lark. This is a good joke on them because there hasn’t been a lark in the monastery for fifteen years.
Across from this monastery, hard by a jetty, is a waterfront hotel, chockfull of apple-cheeked damsels, most of whom have been barred by the Hays Office for soliciting. In the fifth reel, Gladstone makes a speech that sets the House of Commons in an uproar and the King promptly asks for his resignation. Harpo marries a hotel detective; Chico operates an ostrich farm. Humphrey Bogart’s girl, Bordello, spends her last years in a Bacall house.
This, as you can see, is a very skimpy outline. The only thing that can save us from extinction is a continuation of the film shortage.
Fondly, Groucho Marx2
Nothing more was heard from Warner Brothers legal department. That’s the way to do it!
Have a good weekend.
Marx, Groucho. The Groucho Letters (1967)
Ibid