Simon Richards

Simon Richards is Director of The Freedom Association. A Eurosceptic, he runs the Better Off Out campaign, arguing that Britain should leave the European Union. He devised The Freedom Zone, ¹ whose partners are the pro-smoking group Forest and The Free Society. ² Richards blogs in the RightMinds section of the Daily Mail and tweets at @simplysimontfa.

Defending Smokers’ Rights

Against Display Bans and Further Controls on Tobacco

On 9 March 2011 Richards was one of 11 signatories of a Letter to the Editor to the Daily Telegraph criticising the Government’s position on tobacco control and arguing against further restrictions.

Later that day, Richards appeared on BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show to “put the case against the intrusive display ban … It is not for the government to hold our hand in our private lives and guide us down the straight and narrow”. ³

“Open Season on Smokers”

In February 2012 Richards blogged in the Daily Mail online edition that “In politically correct Britain, being offensive to smokers is OK”, in response to a new study examining anti-smoking policy in the UK.

Anti-smoking campaigns, he claimed, “have turned smokers into a despised underclass”.⁴

See also:

• Simon Richards, No smoking please, we’re British killjoys, RightMinds, Mail Online, 20 September 2011, accessed January 2021.