So, if people in non-EU countries are determined to damage their health and to risk killing themselves by smoking high-tar and high-nicotine cigarettes, British tobacco workers want the right to supply them (Unions to fight plans to cut strength of cigarettes, 10 June 2000), even though supplying someone with the means of killing themselves could be construed as acting as an accessory to suicide.

But what do  British tobacco workers care, provided they have their jobs? In pursuit of their narrow self-interests they show themselves to be just as immoral, irresponsible and unscrupulous as their employers.

Not that the tobacco industry - whether employers or employees - is necessarily so different from others. It is just that the activities of this industry are particularly and, one would think, so obviously harmful.

It is our economic system that makes it so difficult for people not to put their narrow self-interests before the common good, so that even the millions of deaths caused by tobacco smoking is not enough to make clear how wrong the behaviour of the tobacco industry is. More enlightened (disinterested and unaffected) legislators have a long, uphill battle against vested interests that twist and falsify reality in attempts to justify  immoral, often grossly immoral or even wicked behaviour.

The tobacco workers' union representative, Dave McKee, provides a good example. Just like their employers, he twists and perverts the truth to fit his cause: "The Government is pushing through legislation without thinking about the consequences, he say, " happy to sacrifice the legitimate livelihoods of people for the sake of political correctness."

According to this perverted view of things, helping someone to damage their health or kill themselves is a "legitimate livelihood" (It may well be, but it is certainly not a responsible or moral one, which is what is implied), while attempting to reduce deaths and the risk to health by stipulating lower tar and nicotine contents in cigarettes is an act of "political correctness".