Just a week into the ban on smoking in enclosed "public" places, there has been much coverage of Conservative plans to increase the tax on alcohol to discourage "binge drinkers" - an idea which, if memory serves, was mooted late last year by the government itself anyway. I like to think that it was such a crazy idea then that it contributed to Ms Hewitt's removal from the health brief.

But on both issues, on health grounds at least for the participants (if not the passive smokers and people beaten up by drunks), surely the best answer is a complete ban? Both are drugs. Alcohol in particular can be served up as a very powerful concoction, ten or more times more powerful than the cider I used to get hold of at school. In study after study when respected organizations look at the wider social effects of different drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, they have upheld the "Blakemore/Nutt hierarchy of harms" which puts alcohol fifth, tobacco ninth, both ahead of cannabis at eleventh and ecstasy way down at nineteenth out of twenty one substances they evaluated. You can read the whole reasoning in the RSA report - and don't pretend to tell me that the RSA is looking at archeological pot finds from the Bullingdon Club of the eighties as we are perhaps led to believe, they are looking at today's market in drugs.

In 2004 in Britain around 106,000 people died from causes related to smoking tobacco, and every other smoker is likely to die because of illness and disease caused by their use of tobacco. There were 8,389 alcohol related deaths. And, while there were 2,598 deaths 'from drug related poisoning' that includes prescribed and over the counter drug misuse, and in fact only 663 were put down to heroin, methadone, cocaine, amphetamine (including ecstasy) and GHB. And, as we know from these studies, the alcohol related deaths are if anything rising not falling.

So clearly the rational response is to ban what are two of the most addictive and dangerous substances we know of. Why would any government wish to be complicit in the licensing for recreational consumption of such killers? But not only that, the Treasury no doubt rubs its hands with glee at the prospect of taking money from these drug addicts and the pushers who supply them, the tobacco and drinks industries. Blood money - that's what it is.

So, which of you competing authoritarian parties is going to bite that bullet? It's populist tinkering nonsense. Something must be done, this is something so let's do this. Let us choose our poison and help make sure our choice is a safe as possible by legalization and regulation of all these substances. Banning them makes their grip stronger. Indeed, as recent evidence on cannabis shows, it makes them stronger.

And I haven't even begun to talk about caffeine, sugar and chocolate. These last two of course contributing to a ticking time bomb of ill-health and early death through obesity related conditions. If you believe people know best and are capable of making their own decisions, let them. Otherwise, do the rational thing and ban all these currently legal killers too and be done with it.

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