And Andrew Gray...

... asks why the government doesn't ban drinking as well as smoking.

I give it ten years or so.

Gillian Bowditch makes this observation:

Whether you applaud or abhor the government’s decision to crack down on obesity and on smoking in public places, the fact that Big Alcohol has been left to police itself is intriguing.

It looks like the normally sensible Ms Bowditch wants the political classes to "do something" about alcohol. She realises why nothing's happened yet:

Ultimately, the biggest stumbling block to tackling alcohol abuse is perhaps the fact that so many of us enjoy a drink. While less than 30 per cent of us smoke and only 20 per cent of us are obese, more than 90 per cent of us - in other words, 40 million British adults - drink.

Whatever happens at Westminster it seems inevitable that we will have to endure some sort of left wing regime here in Edinburgh for many, many years. The urge to ban and regulate will not go away, so why not go for an alcohol ban? Outrageous, you will be saying. Criminalise whisky production? Close all of our pubs? Well, we could wipe out the evil tourist industry once-and-for-all, thus ending the need for Scots to be "servile" to visitors who've probably got too much money anyway. The horrible truth is that plenty of our politicians do think that way. Mark my words - if alcohol isn't banned within 10 years, the campaign will certainly have started.