New cigarette laws - more nonsense legislation if you ask me

The more the Government wraps us up in cotton wool and treats us like a nation with special needs, the more nutty things get.

Last week, laws were brought in requiring supermarkets to “hide” cigarettes from customers by putting them behind screens or doors.

This is to save the hoards of young people who could  catch a glimpse of their shiny packaging, and end up being seduced off the path of healthy righteousness and into a life of smoking.

Now they lie less enticingly behind flapping white drapes or metal doors that scream “what’s behind here is really naughty, don’t look kiddies”.

Oddly, newsagents, where groups of school children and other impressionables regularly hang out, they don’t have to hide the packets at all.

The daftest of all the daft things occurred in Canary Wharf Waitrose at the weekend.

While paying for a basket of shopping, my other half asked for a packet of Marlborough Lights (He wasn’t fooled by the drab screen, and worked out there was contraband behind there).

Just as he was about to hand over his card a second assistant dashed over, STOP! STOP!

Thrusting the card back into his face she  panted they were not allowed to sell the cigarettes because he was standing two tills down from the one directly in front of the cigarette cupboard.

To be clear, they are banned from selling tobacco products from any till other than the one directly in front of the kiosk, even though the whole row is only about five metes long.

This, apparently, is in line with the regulations.

Flustered, she insisted we put all the shopping back in the basket and move it two tills along to the left.

Doesn’t that rather defeat the object? I was tempted to ask.

First the fuss had alerted every five year old in the vicinity to the wonders of the world behind the cupboard doors, and furthermore anyone with children would need to stand directly in front of the kiosk as the Aladdin’s cave inside is revealed.

This whole ridiculous legislation just reinforces my opinion that Whitehall is full of controlling imbeciles who haven’t got a clue about the real world.

For pity’s sake, stop getting involved in things that are above you.