‘I appreciate your concern for the general health of our nation, particularly so as this is your professional duty as minister. Indeed, I admire and encourage your speaking out against addictive and dangerous substances that cause early mortality and violence by their abuse.

However, these addictive substances are structural aspects of our economy and it is in this manner where government action would be most effective: penalties for their production and sale would convince an electorate of the serious intentions of your administration.

Due to the intimate relationship between a healthy and dynamic democracy and education, punitive financial measure MUST be allied to better public health campaigns that do not merely pronounce upon behaviours, but actually inform and persuade.

Nevertheless, it is without question that in a democracy, treating citizens as autonomous individuals capable of rational judgment and practising self-government in their own choices about how they lead their lives is actually of greater importance than the specific concerns of any particular health campaign.

It is the duty of a democratic government to provide its citizens with adequate information from, which to make their own informed choices about their lifestyles, within the context of legislation that prohibits those individual choices from causing general harm to others.

It is the duty of the citizens to inform themselves of the nature of their private choices and practise responsible judgment. Any other arrangement produces a citizenry of children.

Good parenting demonstrates that to make an individual more responsible, one must give them individual responsibility. With regard to the use of alcohol or drugs of any kind in films, you seem to misunderstand the medium. It is an art form. Good art only flourishes in freedom. Legislating against the use of particular props, such as alcohol or tobacco, in films is a direct attack on such freedom.

As an art form, it is not the business of the film industry to promote government agenda. If made so, then it is no longer art. It is mere propaganda, no matter how worthy the cause. With national suicide rates soaring, would you strip Hamlet of his bare bodkin? Would you ban his immortal lines whether to be or not?’