On that day, Keir Starmer said that he would lead a government that would “tread more lightly on people’s lives.” That seemed highly unlikely at the time, and so it has proved. He has now expressed his support for proposals that would extend the current indoor smoking ban to pub gardens, restaurant terraces and other outdoor areas including areas outside hospitals and sports grounds.Well, what is done is done. Expect a big ramping up of lifestyle restrictions and sin taxes in the coming years. For your own good, of course. And if you think the pub and brewing sectors won’t be affected, you’re in for a big disappointment.
— Pub Curmudgeon 🌸🍻 (@oldmudgie) July 5, 2024
The ostensible reason for this is to improve people’s health and “protect the NHS”. However, it is questionable to what extent it will actually deter people from smoking, and the idea that that environmental tobacco smoke in outdoor areas, where it is rapidly dispersed into the air, represents a meaningful health risk **, is ludicrous.
The real motivation is to further demonise smokers and undermine the pub trade. There can be no doubt that this will have a significant negative impact on pubs, particularly wet-led pubs. Currently pubs can accommodate smokers up to a point, even though they are forced to treat them as second-class citizens, but now they will be unable to indulge anywhere on the premises. Pubs will find it very galling that they have invested in smoking shelters and appealing outdoor areas to cater for smokers, only to find it flung back in their face.
Antismokers often make the point that smokers now represent under 10% of the adult population, so excluding them shouldn’t make much difference, and could indeed encourage non-smokers to use outdoor areas. However, by definition, prissy, health-obsessed people are unlikely to spend much time in pubs, and in reality smokers are significantly over-represented in the pubgoing population, even after the indoor ban. After the 2007 indoor ban the sudden influx of non-smokers to pubs was conspicuous by its absence.
There is also the factor of social connections. If one or two members of a group are no longer accepted in a pub, then it is likely that the others will follow suit. This was widely observed following the indoor ban. “It’s not really the same now that Bill doesn’t come any more”. And he’s even less likely to come if he can no longer pop outside for a fag.
The proposals refer to “pub gardens”, but will that be extended to include any property belonging to a pub? Will it be made illegal to smoke in a pub car park? And will it be illegal to smoke while sitting in your own car in a pub car park? In the case of a country pub, what if a farmer decides to allow people to smoke in his nextdoor field?
There is also the obvious implication that, if people can’t smoke in pub gardens, they will inevitably then move to the street outside the pub. It’s already very evident that, where urban pubs have no external smoking area, smoking customers cluster on the street around the door, which a certain category of people find annoying. Will there then be a demand to create “smoking exclusion areas” around pubs? Near me, Wetherspoon’s Gateway in East Didsbury occupies a site in the angle of two roads with outside drinking areas on both sides. Would the smokers just move across the boundary on to the public pavement?
This leads on to the issue of enforcement. The indoor smoking ban is largely self-enforcing, given that the responsibility rests on licensees to ensure that no smoking is allowed on their premises. But it will be much more difficult in outside areas, particularly if pubs have extensive beer gardens. A couple of staff busy serving on the bar can’t be expected to regularly do an outside patrol. And if someone is found smoking, all you can do is ask them to stub it out or move outside the boundary.
The proposals also extend to banning smoking on areas of public streets, such as outside hospitals and sports grounds. The question has to be asked how this will be enforced. It’s hard to see that this will be a police priority when people are routinely being stabbed. And if councils recruit officials to deal with it, wouldn’t there be a whole list of better things for them to do, in particularly clearing up litter? No doubt “Smoking Warden” will prove an attractive opportunity for the kind of people recruited a few years ago to act as “Covid Marshals” and scream at anyone not wearing a mask.
It’s also obvious that in many urban areas nowadays there is a pervasive smell of cannabis, which is illegal anywhere. If this law is not enforced, what are the chances of enforcing localised prohibitions against tobacco?
The Labour Party was founded to represent and speak up for the working class. But their modern incarnation seems to regard them with a mixture of incomprehension and contempt. This proposal demonstrates a total ignorance of working-class preferences and lifestyles. As stated in this article:
The second reason this ban will anger ordinary people is that it involves an awkward element of class. Few of the middle class now smoke: smoking is concentrated among those who do trade and manual jobs, the unemployed. Working-class people do not want to be patronised by middle-class MPs. Once, Labour MPs with direct links to working-class life would have been immediately aware of this. No longer. The Labour party, in Parliament and outside it, has for some time been a middle-class caucus.Tory leadership contenders have been quick to express their opposition to this plan. But this comes across as opportunistic weasel words when they voted for the original 2007 smoking ban, for plain tobacco packaging, and for the generational smoking ban. Would they really reverse this when in office? It’s funny how they seem to rediscover a love of freedom when no longer in government. (It’s worth mentioning that both Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick voted against the generational ban).
Many policy proposals are floated in the media but end up not being actually implemented. This idea has attracted a lot of opposition, including some on the political Left, and there is no certainty that it will happen. But it is only the first in a series of lifestyle restriction measures that we are likely to see, which include:
- Greatly increased restrictions on so-called “unhealthy” food
- Minimum alcohol pricing in England
- Reducing the drink-drive limit in England and Wales
We shall see. But if they decide not to turn the screw, it will be from political expediency, not any concern for individual freedom. And as if on cue, between drafting this post and publishing it, they have threatened the drinks industry with minimum pricing.
* Do they have any other merits?
** For the avoidance of doubt, I do not accept that environmental tobacco smoke in indoor areas represents a significant health risk. Some people just don’t like it. But we are where we are.
Apart from not providing ashtrays, a self-defeating policy if licensees wish to keep their gardens, and other outdoor areas pristine, I can't see how such a ban could be enforced, without putting bar staff in an unacceptable position.
ReplyDeleteThey will enforce it the way the first ban is enforced, they made it an offence to prevent a crime in such circumstances. Bar staff are already in an unacceptable position. Staff have the choice of letting someone smoke and risk a fine and loosing their licence and if they don't pay that fine they could go to prison. So clearly they will just comply with the law. The anti-smoking lobby has spent decades working out how to do all of this especially in the US where they experiment with what works at the county level and then apply what they have learned across the world. Doubtless after the outdoor smoking ban comes in they will produce studies showing that heart attacks and other deaths have been reduced. They do this to deter legislators from changing their minds when businesses close. They did it with the first smoking ban by claiming that heart attacks were reduced as a result of it - despite the fact that the rate of heart attacks has been falling for decades , you could claim that every piece of legislation introduced for the last fifty years reduces heart attacks. The same would be true of the dangerous dogs act and the fox hunting ban. Yes the outdoor ban is enforceable. It was always going to happen because the anti-smoking lobby is ruthless, has the full backing of the state and has no opposition. They are always kicking at an open goal.
DeleteAll of these plans are about abolishing smoking. Something that may have merit but it is also something that is at odds with the relaxing of enforcement in regard to cannabis, the smell of which now pervades areas of many cities.
ReplyDeleteIn other countries it has created a large black market with all the problems that creates.
Yes that is true , the plan is to elimnate smokers (like me ) as a class of citizenary from the planet and I am not happy about that. Remember that the anti smoking lobby and the anti-booze lobby are very often the same people. The Chief Medical Officer that threatened to resign unless smoking was banned inside of pubs published a white paper trying to introduce the concept of 'passive drinking' a year after the ban was introduced. He actually admitted to a bunch of school children that he felt isolated and lonely at University becuase he did not drink or smoke and he wanted to show his peers that there was more to life than drinking and smoking. Presumably, this was a hard thing to do when his peers were sitting inside pubs drinking and smoking and chatting. He said he became a Doctor so that he could join the BMA and realise his ambition of banning smoking and drinking in public places. I suppose it's a good job that he eats food otherwise we would have to worry about restaurants bieng banned too.
DeletePeople congregate at pubs, there are even some ghastly far right people amongst them, they talk to each other but more importantly, they exchange ideas and opinions. Some of these opinions and ideas may well be dangerous. "men can't be women", "climate change in nonsense", "socialism doesn't work", "Trump is great", "Starmer is a totalitarian commie", etc etc. This has to be nipped at the bud.
ReplyDeleteBy a ban on talking in pubs?
DeleteBy killing the pubs, by lockdowns, by making towns so full of diversity people don't want to go and get stabbed.
DeletePubs are haram. For the same of diversity they need to close.
DeleteWill the savings to the NHS really ouweigh the loss of tax revenue fro tobacco?
ReplyDeleteThe cost to the NHS of a person dying quickly in middle age from lung cancer is much less that looking after that man if, after stopping smoking, he survives into his eighties.
And the effect of side smoke from outdoor smoking pale into insignificance compare to the air pollution caused by motor vehicles.
Yeah, the streets would be far better if they were several feet deep in horse manure.
DeleteThe only people who smoke outside pubs are the far right. Pubs are better off without them
ReplyDeleteDuring the covid Lockdowns, when pubs were closed, many people in my area took to drinking at each other's houses (usually in the garden). Beer was cheaper and you could smoke if no-one minded. It took my local publican many years to wean them back to the pub. Even now he still hasn't returned to pre-covid opening times. I suspect that he'll probably give up up there's an outright smoking ban.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the modern day speakeasy could easily return - private house, bring your own drink, smoke if you want?
I see the beer sign blagger Pete DYKWIA Brown - the Citizen Smith of beer writers - is in favour of the outside smoking ban.
ReplyDeleteBecause, he says, Nigel Farage is opposed to it.
In fact his Twitter feed seems to be a constant flow of bilious vindictiveness.
He really has become a loathsome individual who, like WMD fluffer Alastair Campbell, airs his mental health issues for publicity while remaining contemptuous and spiteful towards others in public.
What a hypocrite.
Fortunately we're spared the weasel words of Melissa Cole and Boak and Bailey on this issue because they've flounced off Twitter.
A government minister assured us this morning that no pubs would be hurt by this measure just like pubs benefited from the previous smoking ban. That's good enough for me, good enough for CAMRA and should be good enough for you.
ReplyDeleteThis is a nasty proposal from a nasty political party. As you say it will encourage the nasty little creeps who were covid marshals etc and loved wearing masks. Smokers are the only section of the community who everyone little puritan likes to have a go at. Never forget they are coming for alcohol next !
ReplyDeleteThe only man capable of saving pubs is Farage. Nigel is the man.
ReplyDeleteWe all know it. If you want to save pubs, it's Nige.
I don’t smoke but I respect people’s adult decision making rights. Banning tobacco will be a victory for the black market. Also what is to stop licensees from using frankincense to cover up the smell of smoking inside or saying if inspected I have a couple before opening up and don’t worry I have ventilated the building properly.
ReplyDeleteAlso ironic is the fact when on average more people smoke, average person drank more and when takeaways were often a once a week treat, people were on average thinner.
Oscar
“Tread more lightly on people’s lives.” Labour are about to, I reckon, made drastic changes to council tax and council tax band valuations in order to rob us more, to pay for his imported stabbing voters to live in new builds. And don't you dare complain about it. "A boot stamping on a human face - forever".
ReplyDeleteWell , this all started with the argument that the indoor smoking ban would prevent prevent 54 lung cancer deaths in bar staff deaths a year. This was a lie but it was hard to disprove. It was not until ten years after the ban that the government , after a FIO request was forced to release the the percentage of lung cancer diagnoses in never smokers. The figure was 15%. And as the number of never smokers in the UK population was 52% we can calculate that up to 7 out of 10 primary lung cancer deaths could be attributable to smoking. This represents over a 3 fold risk for smoking and lung cancer, which is far below the 10, 10 , 30 fold risks that we were told in the past. Those risks were based on non-randomised samples and so were always going to be inaccurate but the FOI request number was based on whole population data and therefore is not an estimate but the real world number. Just a few months later a report showed that a minimum of 50% of of lung cancer diagnoses in are false positives. This is because health professionals are taught that pack years smoked is the most important indicator for lung cancer and so never smokers and to a lesser extent former smokers are selected out of early testing and treatment. The problem is compounded by the fact that when the undetected cancer has spread and primary is hard to identify then the smoking status of the patient and again affects the primary diagnoses. Thre are multiple studies going back as far as the 70s showing that detection bias predicts a 3 - 4 fold risk for smoking and lung cancer and we now know that in the UK the risk is indeed just over a three fold risk. So in short, the difference between smokers and never smokers for lung cancer is not 10 or 20 fold but merely 3 fold and this risk is what we expect due to a weel established detection bias , is is simply caused by that fact that health professionals incorrectly beleive that smoking causes lung cancer. So, clearly , as smoking does not cause lung cancer in smokers then then there was no way 54 bar staff deaths a year could have been saved any way. They instead focus on the 80,000 deaths a year in smokers despite that fact that these figure too are based on estimates from non-randomised samples , they are not based on real world whole population data, so in other words they are made up numbers. If you look closely at all anti smoking studies you find at the heart of it is the slight of hand which is they never use real world whole population data , they always use non-randomised samples from studies by themselves , such as the British Doctors study or CPS I and CPS II. It is a slight of hand that they repeat endlessly , again and again and legislators and the public fall for it again and again.
ReplyDeleteQuite right. Most lung cancer deaths in the UK are now down to diesel fumes.
Delete@Lucretius Almost certainly not caused by diesel fumes. Lung cancer rates rose after the second world war and fell in the 1990's so that discounts it as a major cause. It may be a cause of some in occupations that have chronic exposure to those fumes. One thing we can say for certain is that the risks for smoking and lung cancer are far smaller in reality than we were told when the fist smoking ban came in and that those risks are not even real because they are what we expect due to health professionals allowing someones smoking status to affect the outcomes. Given that lung cancer rates are highest where it rains the most and given that lung cancer rates rise after 1945 and fall again around 1985 , then you need to look for something that came down in the rain in that time period - that we know to cause lung cancer. There is only one candidate and that is radiation from 520 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests , the fallout started in 1945 and did not end until 1985. Given that this is true then it is hardly surprising that the powers that be want to eliminate smokers from the planet because they would have known in the sixties and seventies that when the fallout stopped - lung cancer rates were going to fall and how would they explain that away? But regardless of whether the above theory is true or not , what is true is that we have enough data to prove that smoking does not cause lung cancer.
DeleteI need to correct myself from above when I wrote "50% of of lung cancer diagnoses in are false positives" I meant false negatives. So to be clear, those a primary lung cancers that were missed in never smokers. It is also worth noting that a smaller number of lung cancer diagnoses in smokers are false positives , meaning they did not really have a lung cancer primary but a health professional decided that they did due to smoking status. This is how we get the +3 fold risk for smoking and lung cancer. That 3 fold risk is not real.
DeleteIt's reported this morning that the government, unsurprisingly, seem to be having cold feet on this idea. Its sheer unenforceability is an obvious problem.
ReplyDeleteIt's only a matter of time until the outdoor bans come. The goal of the anti-smoking lobby is to incrementally ban smoking everywhere. They are experts at shifting the Overton window. Remember the following from 1998, Clive Bates, director of anti-smoking group ASH, said: "This is a scaremongering story by a tobacco industry front group. No-one is seriously talking about a complete ban on smoking in pubs and restaurants.What they should have asked is whether separate smoking and non-smoking areas should be set up in pubs and restaurants".
DeleteI think enforcement is an issue on pavements but I would guess that beer gardens and any where on premises would probably doable - sooner or later.