Fidelma Cook: Fortunately the drip attached to my arm was on a moveable stand so dragging it along behind me was a fairly simple process.

Fortunately the drip attached to my arm was on a moveable stand so dragging it along behind me into the lift, down two levels and across the vast expanse of Glasgow's Gartnavel Hospital was a fairly simple process. It got a bit tricky, though, shuffling through the automatic doors, dodging the visitors and negotiating the pavement to the side of the hospital.

But, as I lit up, several hours now after the minor op, the rain soaking my cotton dressing-gown, I smiled blissfully at my fellow smokers. The halt, the lame, the wheelchaired, the nurses and the doctors - we sat, stood and puffed in silent camaraderie.

Today, presumably, like the remnants of a defeated army, we would push, carry and drag each other through the grounds to stand on Great Western Road breathing in the far more toxic fumes from passing traffic. And soon, if Glasgow City Council has its way, all the streets of the city will have their smoking outposts consisting of those driven from council premises and even car parks to hide their shame away from the workplace.

In India, enlightened men and women are ridding the country of the iniquitous caste system that somehow used moral justification in keeping the unclean, the pariahs at the bottom of the heap. Here, using similar moral justification, the Scottish Parliament and the zealots of the passive smoking argument are joyfully creating pariahs. As always in totalitarian regimes, it is for our own good.

For a year now, indulging my legal habit - repeat, legal habit - I have stood in the doorways of bars and restaurants enduring the looks of contempt and disdain from those whose bodies are temples. By the end of the evening, when drink has turned them into stumbling fools often heading for their cars, I muse on who is the biggest danger to society. After 10 fags, I will only be harming myself. They, on the other hand, may well kill an innocent pedestrian.

Walk through the meaner streets of our cities and the detritus of the drug culture - syringes, methadone bottles and tin foil - litter the alleyways and greens. That battle has been lost. In our Alice in Wonderland topsy-turvy world I have been offered cocaine (illegal) at a middle-class dinner party but asked to go outside if I wanted to smoke (legal). Most of the people around that table were lawyers who somehow thought it "cleaner" to sniff and snort than to inhale.

Cigarettes may give me a voice that results in call centres repeatedly calling me Mr, but I don't have white snot running down my nose and I am not (so far) risking jail by opening my legitimate packet of fags.

For our parliament, it appears it is easier to fine a publican who turns a blind eye to a legal habit than to root out the drugs barons, the pushers and the pimps who hold sway on vast chunks of our cities.

It's easier to grab the headlines as a forward-looking egalitarian parliament by attacking soft class-ridden targets such as hunting, followed by "health initiatives". All much easier than digging into our increasingly lost society where tolerance and personal freedom are non-PC words. Easier to throw up more CCTV cameras and devise more forms to infiltrate every area of our lives.

Of course, I understand non-smokers' dislike of my nirvana cloud. It stinks their clothes. The jury, though, despite the scaremongering "statistics", is out on passive smoking. According to the World Health Organisation, unless you were force-fed fags like the beagles of yore, the chances of getting lung cancer from my cigarettes are nil. But then I would say that, wouldn't I?

Oh dear, this has become a more philosphical column than I intended. It should have told of the fun of the pariahs who create a party outside pubs and restaurants, one in which the non-smokers join. Of the stink of body odour and bleach in clubs and pubs no longer masked by smoke.

Actually, a year on, I realise the implications of the anti-smoking law are far more serious. While there is no longer the smell of smoke, the stench of hypocrisy is overwhelming. So I have a far better proposition. Ban cigarettes outright. Manage without the billions in tax which claw back far more than is given to the health service. Give me my cigarettes on the national health, like methadone. And, for those of you who still feel righteous, I have one message: beware.

They have already begun to target the obese, the drinkers, the spenders. One day you will fit into a government category and it will be too late. Oh, incidentally, contrary to our health czars, I have to break some bad news to you: we're all going to die, one way or another.