Gasping for one

The smoking decision has the same kind of feeling about it as the hunting business. Despite the obvious and predictable stuff about nanny governments (ironic, since this wasn't a decision that the government originally wanted), it is something else - another consequence of social change.

When I was a teenager you could smoke in cinemas. Then the first major report on the consequences of smoking was published, in 70 or 71, I think. The knowledge that smoking kills - and may kill others - has gradually informed restrictions on the habit - planes, buses, offices and hospitals. In a way it is astonishing that it has taken this long for smoking to be banned in restaurants; there are still places so foul from the stench and that make your eyes water so much, that I only have to enter the bloody door to know that this is not the joint for me.

I did it to others for many years - fugged up their space for them - unable as I was to stop myself. I kicked the habit just in time to avoid being a pavement johnnie, and I'm grateful for that. So I do feel for present addicts (tho not for those who insist that they "enjoy" the habit - bollocks), and have havered between thinking there should be a public ban, and believing in segregation so that the benighted can choose to act madly.

Now the ban is here, though, I find it hard to regret it. Seat belts, crash helmets, bike lights - all this is stuff that we have decided to impose on others for their own (and their families' good), and it hasn't made Swiss out of us yet. Just so long as we unban something at the same time - like permitting women bishops or gay imams.

Comments

[Nick (South Africa)]

Difficult one this; especially for me who, asides from the few behind the bike sheds at school to be a bit of a jack-the-lad, but then not inhaling, never caught the smoking addiction.

I'm of a live and live bent, tending towards a libertarian view on most things…sex, guns, drugs all. So how to stake out a position....who gets to trump? The freedom of those who choose to smoke or that of those who don’t want to be contaminated. On balance in this specific occasion I thing the government should have done what the South African ANC government did a few yrs back. Smoking is banned in all restaurants here other than in specifically designated smoking areas, completely isolated from non-smokers, i.e. by proper’s doors and meeting prescribed ventilation standards. It works, at least for me. The UK position to my mind is just a tad too draconian, but at a personal level it works for me.

Of course even with our properly ventilated ‘coffin nail’ chambers here in the ‘Regime’; if you go out in a group and there are a couple of smokers, they almost always try to get the group to sit in the ‘smog area’; it takes considerable moral courage to challenge this assumption, but being a stroppy shiite, I always do.

I find it vile having to endure other's smoke. It’s reached the stage that I avoid inviting smokers around to my home, and most of my home entertainment, in the best ‘SuthIfrikan’ tradition, takes the form of an outdoor barbecue (termed a braai in South Africa). I've split up with girlfriends because they wouldn’t kick the habit (and hell....why should they), the taste of tobacco in a kiss is rather off putting, and that's the polite version.

>tho not for those who insist that .they "enjoy" the habit - bollocks<
I'd be interested in you expanding on this a tad David, most smokers I've met who have articulated a position, seem to argue that they do enjoy smoking.

[Backword Dave]

It's not that I completely disagree with what you say as I'm largely ambivalent, but that last paragraph needs work if you ever intend to use it in a column.

"We" haven't decided to "impose [this] on others for their own good" -- if there is a "we" who have imposed anything, this "we" did it selfishly. The argument was over passive smoking. "We" are telling others not to smoke for "our" own good -- not theirs. If it were for the good of smokers, "we" would ban cigarette sales.

I'm in favour of women bishops and gay imams (and vice versa), but again, David, "we" don't decide these things. Not while we seperate church and state. It's not a quid pro quo because the quid in this case is not the government's to give.

[mike]

The smoking decision may have the same feeling as the hunting decision but at least in Britain they don't have Dick Cheney to implement it.

"If you don't put out that smoke...."

A South African Attorney General summed it up as follows :

The witch-hunt for smokers, while alcohol remains unscathed, is amazing -

I have never heard of anyone crashing their car while under the influence of cigarettes.

Same for child abuse, assault and other violent crime.

Like smoking, alcohol is a major cause of illness and is highly addictive.

Unlike smoking it impairs your ability to function.

Yet in Britain the question is not whether to ban it but how long to keep pubs open.

I don't like nanny state involvement in smoking, drinking or restricting other choices.

[Mick Peaper]

As a smoker trying to give up this will work well for me, but I feel all the Luddite anti-smoking lobby have stopped halfway, when talking about the anti-social aspect, danger to health, work related problems, dirty bars and streets, massive deaths each year, doing for our own good, etc. All these same points can be applied to drinking so they can now start lobbying to ban drinking and smoking in pubs with a target date of say 2010. Last thought are you more intimidated by 5 drunks walking towards you or 5 smokers.

[Brad]

"it hasn't made Swiss out of us yet". Ironically, Switzerland is well behind the more enlightened social thinking in this case, being one of Europe's bastions of smoking in public places. Foreign visitors are often shocked at the level of smoking generally, although the recent ban in the rail network is a step in the right direction. Eating out here in Berne it is almost impossible to find anywhere that doesn't stink of acrid smoke, irritate the eyes and stimulate the urge to burn one's reeking clothes when back home.

[Dan (Hong Kong)]

I agree with what I think is the key point in your article: "Seat belts, crash helmets, bike lights - all this is stuff that we have decided to impose on others for their own (and their families' good), and it hasn't made Swiss out of us yet." Except that I'd prefer to have Switzerland's civil society to the UK's any day - coming from Hong Kong (where, incidentally, we've had ID cards for ages) it's stunning how unpleasant every-day life in the UK is.
There seems to be a common misconception that just because we're a democracy individuals are completely "free". Eg Theodore Dalrymple, elsewhere in this paper, writes: "I have lived under a Latin American military dictatorship where daily life was freer than in Britain today."
Actually the modern form of democracy basically means the rule of the majority and that rule intrudes in our lives enormously. And thank goodness for that.

[Robert Hopkins (Müstair,Switzerland)]

" ...not made Swiss out of us yet"?, but here we're free to have ourselves killed if we want.

[robert peterson]

I am aware of the risks that all smokers run. Despite this I carried on and on the 14th of May last year had a massive cardiac incident. Fortunately at the onset of the symptoms I realised what was happening and one of my colleagues drove me to the hospital which was 10 minutes away. The heart attack hit just after I was admitted to emergency and the nurse did exactly what was supposed to be done at once. If my colleague and the nurse had hesitated I would have died. After some stents were installed I was discharged 6 days later. I have enjoyed a rude good health but there waws an edge to it because of smoking. All this cost the taxpayer some $22,000 and has left me really felling low. Have I given the cigaretts away? No. So unless I do so in the next few weeks I am going to die. I struggle with this horrible addiction, feel under the weather most days and think that I am really a monument to stupidity. So today I give it away. Maybe I will be able to do it but, please wish me luck. My life would have been very different had I not smoked. I am only 60 years old and If I stop there is much to enjoy. The message: dont smoke, it is an expensive way to kill yourself.

[ruby johnson]

Don't get too carried away with thoughts of the virtues the smoking ban is bound to deliver. It is only right and proper that workers in bars, restaurants and clubs should not be exposed to toxic, second-hand smoke. That's not negotiable. However, as an ageing social smoker who embraced the Irish smoking ban as the perfect opportunity to stub out for good, I find myself still huddling around perishing doorways even in the dog nights of February. Now what's that about?

[LCB]

As an on-off smoker for the last five years, I naturally have mixed feelings about the ban. The non-smoker part of me is happy, for when not smoking, it is awful being subjected to cigarette smoke. But the smoker part of me (normally when very stressed, or after a couple of glasses of red wine; who am I kidding, after one glass of red wine) loves nothing more than lighting up, sitting back and enjoying a cigarette.
However, I am concerned about how much the government is planning on, or actually restricting peoples actions. There is currently a bill in Parliament (though time will tell if it ever gets through) making it an offence to stop women from breast-feeding in public. A good idea, but surely taking the whole nanny-state thing a bit too far?
What this ban has shown is that Britain is not like Switzerland at all; the Swiss can light up anywhere they want, bars, pubs, restaurants, shopping malls, wherever, and when I was there last November, the most draconian thing I saw was a crackdown on fining people caught smoking marijuana while driving. Obviously, Britain is nowhere near being like Switzerland.

[Hagmark]

In my experience, you can enjoy it so long as it doesn't become a habit. Having formerly been a "party-smoker", I can honestly say I enjoyed cigarettes with my alcohol. If you get to the point where you start having withdrawl symptoms if you don't smoke, then "relief" rather than "enjoyment" is probably a better descrition of what it provides you with.

A blanket ban seems OTT to me. I wonder how enforceable it will be in private clubs.

[Martyn (Cambridge)]

I always read your comments with great interest, but this time I fear that you've missed the mark and succumbed tp the popular view that smoking is some kind of illness. Like you, I'm running a marathon this year, Madrid for me, and in aid of this I gave up smoking from new year. No patches, no cigarettes (well, 2), no problem. Do I miss it? Course I do! It's a pleasure to smoke a cigarette with a pint, or after an essay's just been written, and however much the anti-smoking lobby tell me I'm wrong about this, I know that I'm not. I fully intend to start again once the marathon has been run.

The passive smoking issue and the victim culture it creates - "I don't mind if you're killing yourself, just don't kill me and my kids" - is obviously the main point here. And here, clear segregation seems to be the obvious answer. I agree that it's unpleasant to eat a meal surrounded by smoke, and that on a night out, not everyone wants to go home smelling of smoke. So have clearly marked areas, some non-smoking bars, and some smoking. If the demand is there, they should be created anyway (see Wetherspoons). And if a mixed group go out, it seems reasonable for the smokers to miss the odd night smoking, or the non-smokers to put up with the 'fug' every once in a while.

[Tim Hammond]

What nonsense! Seatbelts and crash helmets are a perfect example of bad laws that restrict liberty. As for the evidence that passive smoking is harmful, it is not just non-existant, every study has actually shown that it is not harmful - those that show harm are statistical frauds, including the EPA. The only grounds for a ban area aesthetic - as a non-smoker I hate the smell, particularly the day after. But we should be honest about it, not produce all this embaressing piffle about health.

[Nigel Calvert]

For me the smoking ban doesn't have any feel to it other than pure common good. I couldn't care less if people smoke in their own homes, or even on the street (although I object to the careless littering of used fag-ends - you wouldn't stand for alcoholics tossing away their empty bottles, would you?). The trouble I have with objections to the smoking ban in public places, is that they have no basis in reason. Exactly what freedom is being taken away? "Freedom" to be addicted? Since when was there any freedom in the complex biochemical and physiological compulsions of an addict? Smokers no more "freely choose" to gasp on their next fag than anyone else "freely chooses" to draw their next breath - it's instinctive, it's compusive, choice - by virtue of the actions of smokers themselves - is simply not a part of the equation. If smokers deny themselves any choice in what they do, why should the rest of us feel compelled to defend their choices, or lack thereof?

[David]

I know, I know but oh it's too good to miss.

"Haver" = to babble incoherently, to talk nonsense
"Waver" = to exhibit irresolution or indecision, to vacillate.

[Bernard]

Posturing 'liberals' surely ought to fall foul of the Trade Descriptions Act. What is 'liberal' about forcing pubs to ban smokers when neither they nor their clients wish it? What is 'liberal' about forcing the poor benighted Church of England to parade women bishops just to satisfy a bunch of emasculated pretentious journalists and feminist hysterics? And as for 'gay' imams ... this is just padding out a sound bite rather than a serious proposal.

[James Wild]

Of course everyone knows that smoking is unhealthy however the medical evidence for passive smoking is divided. Some experts even believe that passive smoking is relatively harmless. It would have been far better for a compromise bill to have been passed and I hope one day it will be. Such a compromise could have been: 1. Allow anti-smoking law to be devolved to councils rather than parliament.So each area can decide on how authoritarian they wish to be.
2. Allow a total ban up to 10.30 and then allow smoking after this watershed.
3. Force all pubs to have non-smoking areas as large or larger than the smoking areas. Also pubs must have decent ventilation.
The trouble with the bill just passed is that it will lead to pubs closing in their hundreds all over the country, it will mean more smokers staying home and smoking in front of their children, and thirdly it is an infringement of our civil liberties which treats us all like children.

[Anthony]

In the following places you may not smoke: Offices, shops, trains, planes, buses, most taxis. In Church, in the doctor's or the dentist's. At the cinema,in the theatre, at the Opera. In most restaurants and coffee shops, in fast food outlets. At the gym and at the leisure centre, in the hairdressers or at the Post Office.

The one last haven for smokers is the pub - and now the non-smokers want to take that as well? The dreadful term 'family-friendly pubs'has been bandied about in this debate, thoroughly depressing isn't it?

[Julian]

I agree with Brad from Berne - I live in Zurich, and Switzerland is so behind the rest of Europe when it comes to anti-smoking issues – as to be virtually non existent. It's almost impossible to find a restaurant with a “no smoking” area, and when you do it’s likely to be the table in the corner by the toilets. They even have a fag break in the middle of films at the cinema, and, last time I looked, health insurance premiums carried no loading for smokers! Things are changing slowly but the days of enjoying an evening out without having to passively smoke a pack of Marlboros are still, sadly, a long way off – so much for the ultimate democracy!

[Peter Smith]

Smoking might be eliminated by removing the various subsidies on tobacco growing around the world, which would make too much sense for our politicians to do it. Health care costs would go down, and partly offset the tax revenues now generated. Of course, there would be a major lobby against from the tobacco companies, hooray for private enterprise.

[Mark]

It seems to have slipped the minds of many that pubs, restaurants and clubs are not public places, as is commonly stated, at all. They are privately owned, and if the owners wish to allow smoking they should not be prevented by law. Nobody is forced to enter places that allow smoking and be subjected to cigarette smoke.

[James Wild]

If we truly believe in freedom this smoking ban was wholly illiberal. As to Mr Aaronovitch's closing comments on unbanning things such as women bishops and gay imans, how can we force religions to reform in a free society? We can't! It's just as illiberal to force churchs to become liberal. You simply have to tolerate different religions and smoking in pubs if you are to be considered tolerant. What we now have is 'liberal' authoritarianism.

[sonic]

I'm from the UK, but moved to New Zealand just before they banned smoking anywhere indoors (I also smoke 20 a day)

Yo be honest I've enjoyed it, pubs are much nicer places to sit, and if you want a fag you just go outside.

Mind you it's 25 degrees here!

[SMJ]

"so long as we unban something at the same time - like permitting women bishops or gay imams."

What you and a frightening number of others don't seem to grasp, David, is that the decision whether to ordain women bishops or to permit gay imams is no more the business of you, the government, or a "majority of the public", than the decision by a landlord whether or not to allow a still legal activity to take place on his premises - private premises which are only "public" insofar as he chooses to welcome paying customers. None of these things simply has anything whatever to do with you.

I had thought that amid the twilight of western civilisation we could still rely on a basic understanding of the watery liberalism of JS Mill to hold the ring a while longer. But, especially now that "liberal" is an appelation coveted only by the downright illiberal, absolutely nothing emerging from the circus of British politics would now surprise me.

[Tom]

Peter Smith nails it. Pubs and suchlike are private places. One is not forced to enter them and at a time when so many adults don't smoke, a free market should provide plenty of venues for those who want to breath clean(ish) air. To impose a ban is nannying, and making cracks about Switzerland does not really ease the pain of this latest piece of puritan nonsense from HMG.

A person above derided the libertarian argument on the grounds that smoking was an addiction and hence not a freely chosen activity. Considering how many millions of people have quit the weed, I would suggest that smokers are just as capable of exercising Free Will as anyone else.

[Tomahawk]

Other people's smoke is disgusting. It is the waste product of tobacco in the same way that urine is the waste product of booze. If you insist on the right to exhale your smoke over my hair and clothes, and reserve the right to piss all over yours. Fair? The only difference is that drinkers can store up their waste for a while and deposit it cleanly in a loo. Smokers can't store their smoke - they exhale it immediately, covering everyone in the vicinity.

As for this idea that people have a choice not to go into pubs where smoking is allowed, the choice is usually between socialising and not socialising. Most pubs allow smoking because if they banned individually, their smoking customers (and the latter's non-smoking companions) would likely go elsewhere. Non-smokers put up with it now because there is little other option available. If smoking were banned in all pubs, it would be smokers who would just have to put up with it. That's as it should be, because whereas non-smokers now must endure discomfort and smelly clothes, gasping nicotine addicts in the future would merely have to foresake their filthy pleasure, and even then only temporarily.

Stub it out!

[Brett]

The law is wrong. Period. I don't care how many people support it; majority rule and individual liberty are antithetical concepts. Bullying the unpopular is nothing to be proud of.

You like the results? It doesn't justify the violation of property right; it simply proves you have no respect for the rights of your fellow citizen.

[Ronnie]

David, I think you've hit the nail on the head. This law will paradoxically benefit tens of thousands of smokers, who will live longer as a result.

Although dressed up as a measure against the supposed dangers of passive smoking to non-smokers, (a very marginal risk compared to active smoking) in essence the advance in public health it will represent is down to the effect it will have on smokers,(encouraging them to quit, by denormalising their addiction) and also critically in my view on the smokers who have already quit.

Relapse is a massive problem for smokers who manage to quit. Well over half of those who quit successfully for a month, are smoking again after a year. Unsurprisingly a lot of these people go back to smoking 'down the boozer'.

Smoking is truly exceptional in the harm it does to health, it kills 120,000 people early every year, more than alcohol, illicit drugs and road traffic accidents put together. If no-one smoked, health inequalities in this country would substantially disappear. This legislation is a piece of enlightened paternalism. In a couple of years as you rigthly say, we'll look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.

[Joe]

Are the Government out of their mind in banning smoking in public places? They run the grave risk that smokers will give up the habit in their millions!!

If every smoker gave up the habit tomorrow, Gordon Brown and the Treasury would have a collective blue fit, realising, suddenly, just how much smokers contribute to the national finances. Probably no more than 1p in every pound spent by smokers goes abroad to purchase the raw tobacco, the rest goes to the Treasury, either directly as excise duty (87.5 per cent) and indirectly in the taxed businesses and taxed incomes of those involved in the manufacture and supply of tobacco products. In addition, smokers tend to die younger than they would have done had they not been smokers of infirmities such as heart disease and lung cancer in which the period between onset and death tends to be relatively short and in which the cost to the NHS is, therefore, relatively small.

Not only would the Treasury have to make up for the lost income through increased taxation but also have to increase provision for state pensions and other benefits for people who are living longer because they have given up smoking, and who eventually die of slow and lingering infirmities that will cost the NHS millions.

Seems like yet another Government initiative that has not been properly thought through!!