DAILY POST YOUR VOICE IN WALES: Nanny-state taken to new ludicrous high.

WE'VE banned smoking in enclosed public places, banned advertising it, printed frightening messages on its packaging and raised the legal age of purchase to 18.

Its use is banned on the stage and frowned on in movies; some firefighters are reluctant to go into homes which still bear the lingering smell of tobacco smoke; neighbours complain to the authorities (and receive a sympathetic ear) if smoke from an open window in the house next door drifts in through one of theirs.

Nobody pretends the world wouldn't be a healthier place if the early European seafaring explorers of the New World hadn't enthusiastically reported native use of tobacco and brought the practice back with them.

But short of making it an illegal drug, the near-hysteria surrounding its sale to under-age children is threatening to take nanny-stateism to new and ludicrous highs.

How many shops, facing existing penalties and random council "stings", are likely to be supplying feckless under-18s keen to hone their habit? How many, that is, compared with contraband sources, irresponsible family and friends of legal age, and vending machines?

Why would an underage would-be purchaser go into a newsagent or tobacconist when the alternatives are so much easier?

Yet with staggering naivety and a bit of cod psychology, the government has convinced itself that out of sight will mean out of mind for our apparently witless youth. If they can't see the product they won't be tempted to buy it. Are they really so sure buying it under the counter, so to speak, won't make it even more alluring?

For struggling small shopkeepers (supermarkets can much better afford the necessary cosmetic changes), redesigning their shop interiors may prove to be one dogmatic government diktat too far. Where are they going to keep the things? In a back room while a would-be customer ransacks the till?

So we'll forge an illegal underground trade and penalise the poor shopkeeper. Encourage new crimes instead of enforcing existing laws and toughening-up existing penalties.

We need to change social attitudes by education - not ape Victorian ones which hid piano legs behind skirts.