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Public health and the obsession with behaviour
...It is evident that Cameron’s choice has little to do with health, but is more a political selection arising out of prejudice against the sorts of people who engage in the sorts of activities that would be increasingly stigmatised under a new Tory government (as indeed they have been under New Labour). People who are overweight, appear drunk in public places, smoke cigarettes, use heroin, have become objects of public disgust and professional condescension and would remain so under a Cameron government.

In their emphasis on links between behaviour and disease, politicians assume that public-health authorities have reliable techniques for achieving the behaviour changes they believe will improve the health of the nation. But this is a triumph of wishful thinking over experience....

...The focus of government health policy on behaviour reflects a wider transformation of the relationship between the state and the individual. The concept of behaviour is traditionally associated with children and animals, often in the context of psychological experimentation. In place of the active subject of democratic citizenship, the behavioural approach assumes an individual who is the passive object of official policy. Instead of an independent agent playing an active role in society, the citizen is assumed to be ignorant and immature, requiring expert professional guidance. The self-determining individual is reduced to being the target of official propaganda and political manipulation....