It has long been the consensus in the medical profession that passive smoking is dangerous, so there was outrage when the British Medical Journal of May 17th published a study which found that non-smokers whose spouse smoked did not suffer lung cancer or other smoking-related diseases as a result.

ECONOMIST: Ups and downs for Big Tobacco

When a Downing Street advisor points out that loneliness is probably more dangerous to our health in retirement than smoking, there are plenty who immediately assume that the advice is part of some dastardly statist plot to get pensioners out of their one-bed flats to sweat their final years away on a factory production line - see below for one example.

BBC: Friends are a matter of life and death

Regular puffing on cigarettes is now thought much more dangerous than occasionally smoking crack.

ECONOMIST: But efforts to warn people off drugs are still too timid