A former health minister called Lord Ara Dasai says we should ban smoking in parks and other public places.

He’s so far confined his recommendations to London, but he wants councils up and down the country to consider bans of their own. That means a ban could be coming to a park near you.

As far as I can tell, the only effect this will have is to give a load of publicity to those rabid pro-smoking organisations you sometimes see in tobacco-related news reports on the telly.

You know the ones I mean. Their spokespeople always bang on about people’s right to choose and the encroachment of the state on our precious liberties. Suggest to them that 90 Capstan Full Strength or Woodbines a day might not be a sensible way to go through life, and they’ll accuse you of being no better than Hitler and Mussolini.

Or at least, I think that’s what they generally say, as it’s often difficult to discern words amid breathing that sounds like random minor chords played on a harmonium with a knackered bellows. You find yourself wondering for how long you could leave a white dog such as a West Highland Terrier in their front room before it turned the colour of a Simpsons character.

As far as I can tell, the only real argument anybody’s given for banning smoking in parks is that it might encourage impressionable non-smokers, especially the young, to try tobacco themselves.

I don’t hold with this line of reasoning, because if young people really were influenced by what they saw going on in some of this country’s parks, there’d be clues.

For example, when parents asked their children or other young relatives what they’d like to drink with their evening meal, the reply would not be: “I’d like a glass of milk/water/lemonade/juice, please.”

No, it would be: “I’d like a four pack of extra strong lager, please, the kind made from non-organic fertiliser and the contents of spent car batteries.”

When we asked them what they planned to do after their meal, the answer would not involve homework, sport, video games, listening to music or socialising with friends.

Rather, it would be something like: “Well, mum/mad, I thought I’d get together with a group of likeminded people, demand spare change from passers-by and get arrested after hallucinating being chased down the street by some big lions dressed as The Chuckle Brothers.”

Perhaps a more sensible approach to discouraging smokers might be to give us all credit for the brains we were born with. I realise that might be a new concept for the folks in charge, but it could well be just wacky enough to work.