Time to defend student drinking and smoking culture

We’ve all heard politicians and other sanctimonious bastards banging on about how student smoking and drinking culture should be curbed.

The older generation’s constant habit of moaning about how “it wasn’t like this in (their) day” couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, the government’s continual attacks on the culture has created a servile, conformist and puritanical generation; bored, disenfranchised, easily manipulated and unwilling to challenge authority.

The Blair administration’s propaganda was ruthless. GCSE and A Level Science syllabuses have been dominated by an anti-smoking, anti-drinking and generally anti-pleasure agenda; at school we had to argue about the benefits of abstaining from smoking rather than learning about molecular structures.

Then there was the Smoking Ban in 2007, the continuous tax hikes on tobacco and alcohol (which has led to 26 pubs closing every week) and the proposed plain cigarette packaging, which all reflect a deliberate attack on a culture that’s about the freedom to choose rather than submission to authority.

Leave students alone, we’re entitled to a drink!

The result? A pleasure-deprived culture; one based on an obsession with targets and jobs, not the enjoyment of bohemian life. We’re smothered by a ‘CV culture’, continual assessment, the possibility of employers and universities stalking your Facebook pictures, grade inflation, the globalisation of education (i.e competing with foreign students, not just your classmates) and the modern obsession with coursework.

Society is now based on conformity and not on ideas or simple human pleasures. Students smoke and drink because they want to enjoy themselves; trying to take that away from them has a negative social impact.

Leave student drinking culture alone!

University is a time for exploration and experimentation; it’s the time to be a hedonistic thrill seeker. Without allowing people to make mistakes and live with the consequences, we’ll produce people utterly dependent on the State.

The political establishment are simply fascists with friendly faces, so here’s an idea for your New Year’s Resolution; light up a cigarette, and start the revolution.