There are about 10 million adult smokers in the UK. None are professional. There are far too many professional anti-smokers whose aim is to get rid of smoking altogether. They will fail.

They are people with a purpose in life (and are convinced everyone would be better off not smoking), but others can have a purpose in life as I do, which I'm quite convinced keeps me going, as did Monet (never seen without a cigarette in his mouth).

The NHS never mentions this, and few doctors do. We live in a very shallow age. Now the latest thing is that bacon is bad for you, another killer. It's as though shortly death itself can be postponed. That seems to be a mad aim.

We are all going to die, and this luckily comes at the end of life. People are living longer, yes, but this includes the smokers. We are moving into a very different world. Newspapers are dying (the young don't read them), and online everyone becomes editor. Things are going to be very different. The way things are advertised is going to be very different, with less, not more, control.

The figures for smoking have been the same for about four or five years now. This means that you have a hardcore of smokers – naughty people who should know better – who accept the fact that fate plays a part in life and know that to be obsessed with longevity is life-denying. There is only now.

The aim of the professional anti-smoker is to get rid of it. The press tells us "it's not acceptable". Well, it is for 10 million people, who probably don't all read newspapers and have little to do with the political and media elite. So how come the professional anti-smoker is now an expert in packaging? Have you noticed that marijuana has quite good sales (they tell me) with no packaging whatsoever? Tobacco will be the same. Why does the government only listen to the anti-smokers who obviously natter and natter about it? My father was one of these anti-smokers, and they won't be happy until it's gone.

But aren't we heading for some kind of showdown here? Why won't they accept that there are still a lot of smokers and that the reports of its demise are wildly wrong? The young think they are immortal and this won't change.