READ THE FOLLOWING statement slowly. Draw it down deeply into your lungs, hold it there for a moment, then allow it to stream out, hang briefly in the air, then drift off into nothingness: “The single biggest contribution devolved government can make is to reduce the toll of preventable death caused by smoking.” The words are those of Scotland’s First Minister, Jack McConnell, announcing the ban on smoking in public places that comes into effect throughout Scotland this weekend.

The single biggest contribution? Is that what he really means? Bigger than rescuing the health service, turning round the economy, transforming schools, ending child poverty, making us proud to be a nation again? Somehow I had rather higher expectations of devolution. But there you are, the big changes are always the trickiest. A smoking ban comes easy.

Not cost-free, however. No law that diminishes choice comes without consequences, and this one is dripping with them. Yet at no point in the course of the debate has it been seriously challenged by Scottish politicians. It is simply taken as read that the health of the nation will benefit, however shaky the medical evidence of passive smoking. Ministers have pushed ahead, relying on a soft and woolly consensus that sees nothing wrong with limiting individual freedom, since the greater interests of society must always take precedence. They reflect the Labour Party’s instinct for control from the centre, and the Liberal Democrats’ reputation for inconsistency (sometimes the liberty of the citizen, sometimes the omniscience of the state).

In Scotland, of all places, it will hit the very people who are the bedrock of the party. John Reid, then Health Minister, was right when he called smoking a “working-class pleasure” and Scottish culture is built, as nowhere else, on the working-class tradition. Mr Reid suggested it would be wrong to patronise the workers by telling them what they could and could not enjoy, adding, with commendable lack of political correctness: “As my mother would put it, people from these lower socio-economic categories have very few pleasures in life, and one of them they regard as smoking.”

I tested the Reid thesis at Stratford’s Bar on the Gorgie Road in Edinburgh where the prime targets of this high-minded reform are to be found. They gather at opening time, which is 6am, to start the day on a pint and a fag before setting off for work. The atmosphere is surprisingly jolly for that time in the morning, the “crack” is good-natured, with more than a touch of gallows’ humour. They talk about which is better, a slow death in the fug of the public bar or a freezing death out on the pavement after the ban is introduced. The jokes come enveloped in a cloud of smoke from the roll-ups that are the favoured brand in these parts. They talked with a healthy mixture of ridicule and contempt about the politicians who rule their lives. These are not people who regard their health or longevity as the prime concerns of life; they put small pleasures first. It is their choice — something that doctors and politicians find hard to comprehend.

So the first consequence of the ban is the alienation of one part of the population that already considers itself remote from government. The second is that what one commentator has described as the evolution of the nanny state into the police state. Taking their cue from the Scottish Executive and its evangelical support for the ban, local councils have been outdoing each other in the vigilance with which they intend to impose it. Thus, Edinburgh City Council has announced that it will deploy “undercover agents” who will disguise themselves as drinkers, and snoop on bar-owners or customers who flout the ban. They will be inside the premises to stop smokers lighting up, and outside to fine them for tossing fag-ends on to the pavement. Meanwhile, every household in the city will receive a leaflet telling them how to inform on “rogue” pubs.

Further afield, Tayside, East Renfrewshire and others have published plans to forbid smoking in public parks, outside hospitals or anywhere near schools. Highland Council has banned all its employees from taking cigarette breaks in office hours, so smokers are not even allowed to go outside to light up. Local employees will be stopped from smoking on duty “because”, as one council announced, “they will be doing themselves harm in company time”. Thus self-harm becomes illegal — a startling new concept in the lexicon of our new democracy; one should never underestimate the ambitions of the town hall bureaucrat to extend his domain.

What, then, is the overarching justification for this massive extension of state control? The arguments rest on the findings of the Government’s Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health, which says that the evidence for damage caused by second-hand smoking is “conclusive”. That claim is widely disputed. But if it were proved to be true, then the ban would be, self-evidently, counterproductive. By driving smokers out of public places and into the home, it would redouble the risk to families, particularly those with young children who are, in any event, far more likely to be victims than those who have made the conscious choice to drink or work in the smoke-filled atmosphere of a pub or club.

And so, this weekend, we will have a ban that is rejected by those most directly affected, which will have little or no effect on public health, and will satisfy only the legislators and the apparatchiks. This, says the First Minister, is devolution’s single most important contribution to our society. It is not one I am proud of.

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