Rather than being lectured about what is right and wrong, we are constantly being advised about what is safe and unsafe behaviour. Perhaps the best known examples of this in the UK are the public health campaigns telling us to stop smoking, eat less fat, drink less alcohol and take more exercise. Less well known is the fact that, with the exception of giving up smoking, none of these steps has been proven to have any significant health effects. But they have acted as injunctions to alter our lifestyles - in effect, to turn away from sin and cultivate what the puritanical used to call a 'healthy mind in a healthy body'. Even the anti-smoking crusade has this character.
Smoking is definitely a health risk.
But everybody knows that already. Behind the campaigns on passive smoking, there is an impulse to regulate public spaces and personal behaviour that does not feel the need for too many facts to excuse its intervention. No Smoking Day 2001, to be held on Wednesday 14 March in the UK, marks another new departure. The publicity and educational material brought together on the No Smoking Day charity's website contains relatively little information about the straightforward health risks. Extreme is the way to go - extreme muscles, extreme sport and extreme sex, but to perform successfully you need extreme health too.