JFC Travel Blog

As a non-smoker I tend to prefer smoke free environments but I do believe that the government’s action of banning smoking in England from July is a step too far on many levels. First of all, I think that if companies want to accommodate smokers they should be allowed to, what harm does having a well ventilated smoking room cause to the non-smoker, it’s not an area that they have to venture?

I can see the smoking ban affecting travellers the most, if you’re waiting for a flight going outside for a cigarette isn’t as easy as it is in a pub, you have to leave the secure area and then face all the hassle of getting back through security (and airport security is a terrible joke these days). If you’ve just come off a 10 hour flight and waiting at the airport for your connection, a cigarette is a smokers way of relaxing. Personally my way of relaxing is getting a beer at the bar or in the lounge. Put simply, banning smoking in airports is just going to make a stressful experience even more stressful for a large number of smokers out there.

Yes, it would be nice if they quit, but that’s a choice they need to make themselves, every packet they smoke alerts them of the dangers, it’s a risk they choose to take. I know the risks of alcohol but it doesn’t stop me drinking beer, and lately the government claims that four pints a week is excessive, but four pints is nothing. We need less of this nanny state and more common sense, the government wants to think for people and a lot of people are letting them.

Personally I think the rules as they currently stand are just about right, these days smoking tends to be banned in places the public has no option but to be such as in shops, on trains, buses, etc but owners of bars and restaurants are allowed to define their own smoking policy depending on what they decide is best for their business. Many have moved to have separate smoking areas, some are doing quite well banning smoking altogether and others are still all smoking throughout. We have choice and people can choose where they want to spend their free time.

If banning smoking is such a good business move why did Wetherspoon originally claim they were making all their pubs smoke free by 2006 and now, less than a month before the ban, only a small number of pubs have been made no-smoking. If a smoking ban is what the majority want then why has the market not adapted to this new demand for non-smoking pubs? Could it be that most people are happy with what we have got now?

Why can’t companies decide what they want to do on their own property, I only support a legal ban on smoking in areas where non-smokers have no option but to use such as on public transport. However, if the transport provider can provide a ventilated dedicated smoking section (like GNER had started doing when they were refurbishing their trains) then they should be allowed to do so. A large aircraft like the A380 would be a good candidate to offer a smoking section assuming that they can get the ventilation right.

The pro-smoking blog ‘Taking Liberties‘ has some examples of where even supporters of the ban may think the government has gone too far. For example, technically under the law, if your home is also your office then you have to ban smoking from the rooms in which you work and put up the legally required no smoking signs. It appears that England is going to be like Scotland in the sense that the law will require no smoking signs to be placed everywhere, even places you would never think of smoking such as banks, cathedrals, supermarkets, etc. In Scotland they also place the signs on bus stops and phone boxes, I wonder if we’ll go that far? Shouldn’t it be up to the owner of the premises to decide if their customers/staff need signs alerting them to the law and if so the best way of informing them. If we had a sign for every law that was possible to break then we’d have no need for wallpaper, the walls would be covered with signs (no murder, no fighting, no leaving without paying, no spitting in the buffet, etc).

Of course England is not the first in Europe, I think Ireland was the first (at least the most well known) and Scotland was the first in the UK. A lot of countries are banning smoking with varying degrees of success. It’ll have numerous cultural implications. The Netherlands coffee shop culture will be killed when their ban goes into place in 2008, this will probably have a large impact on tourism for Amsterdam (although if you think cannabis is the only reason to go to Amsterdam you’re missing out on a great city) not forgetting the shisha cafes throughout Europe that are likely to close.

Go back 30 years and the rules were so far in the smokers favour that things needed to change to increase the rights to non-smokers. Now things have gone too far the other way.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 1:15 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.