I recently saw this interesting post on X/Twitter about how smoking bans are a touchstone for a society’s general attitude to freedom. I won’t make any further comment beyond saying that they are an examplar of the dictum of science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein that “The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”
I have a running theory that a country’s attitude towards smoking tobacco tells you whether or not it has succumbed to the liberal technocratic project.Smoking is one of those things that the data-driven managerial consensus - the same one that produced The Science™ as an infallible moral authority - has pulled out all the stops to not just discourage but eliminate all together.
It all happened very quickly. The wholesale rejection of smoking is now so entrenched in our cultural ether that it is very much taken as the only true Enlightened position.
What’s astounding is how quickly it happened - seemingly in a single generation. It was a multi-pronged whole-of-society approach involving a very strategic shaming campaign (those odious cigarette pack labels showing deformities) and every other policy lever in the governance toolbox.
The fact that France of all nations, just this summer, took the extraordinary step of banning smoking in outdoor public spaces including parks and beaches, says everything.
First they shame you, then they tax the shit out of tobacco products, and then they regulate where you can smoke. And that space eventually starts to shrink - from just some outdoor places, to now “just” this corner where we tell you (in Singapore they set up cones around which you can smoke like an undignified crack addict but you can’t stray beyond the painted box on the floor, and if you do, you get yelled at like a child that colored outside of the lines), and then someday, to nowhere at all.
I now consider only the countries which have a laissez-faire approach to smokers the only “real” ones left. It’s a good proxy for the embrace of genuine romanticism in an age of technocratic management. This isn’t just plaguing liberal democracies by the way - even places like the UAE and China are increasingly shrinking spaces where you can light up a cigar or cigarette.
It’s why I love some parts of the Middle East and Southeast Asia so much. They still feel like real places - not Disneyland versions where everything is micromanaged. They are still wild and free, unmolested by the managerial revolution.
Clutching at straws there Mudgie.
ReplyDeleteThe attitude towards smoking is not about controlling people but about protecting them.
ReplyDeleteThere is an overwhelming body of evidence that tobacco smoke is a dangerous carcinogen. Controlling its spread is akin to controlling the use of asbestos, insisting on cleaning up diesel exhausts, removing tetra-ethyl lead from petrol, controlling substances like trike in industry
FWIW I enjoy smoking cigars and a pipe but do understand that other people don't appreciate having to breath my smoke so only indulge in isolated outdoor areas.
Yawn. How many times have we been over this before?
DeleteYes, there are risks attached to smoking tobacco, as there are to many other activities. But, so long as it doesn't impinge on you, why shouldn't adults be allowed to engage in it? Why not let smokers have their own pubs and clubs where antismokers would never need to go?
Yawning doesn't invalidate an argument
DeleteSmoking in a public place does impinge on other people.
I am all in favour of having separate, well ventilated, smoking rooms as they do in other countries.
What is your attitude to compulsory seat belt wearing for motorists; or motor cycle helmets?
Ah good, so you don't support blanket smoking bans after all :-)
DeleteSeat belts are really a bit off topic. It's a trivial infringement of liberty that I really couldn't be bothered about.
Motorcycle helmets are maybe a better example, and that's off topic too. But remember Fred Hill died in prison after campaigning against them.
As with most things, it's a question of balancing competing rights: your right to smoke and my right not to breathe it in. A sensible compromise would have been to retain smoking rooms and carriages in workplaces and on trains and have separate rooms for smokers in pubs, although the shift towards knocking them through into open spaces and having dining areas throughout would have made that difficult in many. There should also have been an exemption for members' clubs, although it would have been difficult to police: in Germany, some pubs became members only overnight to get round the ban, membership being extended to anyone who signed a book on the bar.
ReplyDeleteIn Denmark if a pub is a certain size and owned by the landlord you can smoke. Copenhagen has some great ones. These pubs are packed. Non smoking ones much less so.
DeleteNige will bring back smoking in pubs!
ReplyDeleteI hope !
DeleteFarage bring back smoking in pubs? You're having a laugh. There won't be any pubs left by the time Keir's moronic Scheißeschau collapses, It's over for pubs, pal.
ReplyDeleteI take no notice of their silly regulations or these idiot public health fanatics who are killing our pubs and freedoms. Whilst you can't smoke in pubs otherwise the landlord gets it when some creep reports it, i take great delight in sparking up elsewhere. Good countries to visit for smokers are Austria, Germany, Greece, and Switzerland. Good prices for tobacco and many friendly smokers.
ReplyDeleteYeah quite surprised that Germany is a last bastion in Northern Europe. (Not Bavaria, mind). I can't quite put my finger on it but some pubs just need to have that aspect, depending on their niche. I'm a non-smoker but it was somewhat liberating to see punters puffing away unimpeded.
ReplyDeleteMy old local in Ireland was for many decades a classic nicotine-stained boozer where, when I used to smoke regularly, I'd sit at the bar enjoying my rollies and watching the fug of smoke hang about chest high.
ReplyDeleteYears after the smoking ban came in the new owner, a good chum of mine who also took care of my cannabis requirements, invested heavily in what became known as the smokeatorium. We're talking solid oak shelters, heaters above all the tables, individual blankets for cold days, outside tellies and all protected by an electric awning.
It paid him back in spades because even on the wettest,coldest days the outside area gets just as busy as the inside and of course the former is where all the good craic is.
To a man it's hard to find anyone who would appreciate going back inside to smoke.
That ship, like the return to the EU that so many Remoaners dream of, has long since sailed.
And the old owner who never smoked a fag in his life ? Chronic emphysema. And his wife who would never let him turn on the extraction fan they installed because of the extra cost of running it ? Run over by a truck while out cycling to keep fit. Life doesn't always deal you a fair hand.
On a happier note I had my first pint of cask in months last night in my new local. Theakston's Best. Sublime.
Good for you !
DeleteIt's a tricky one. I'm a non-smoker and I don't like stinky fag smoke. I have memories of pubs before 2007 in which the air was often absolutely vile, and almost totally unbreathable in one or two. So it's nice that this is all now history.
ReplyDeleteBUT
Banning a lawful activity in premises owned by a private individual or business is wrong.
Forcing retailers to hide legally saleable items is wrong.
Not allowing legitimate companies to apply their chosen branding to legitimate products is wrong.
One of the first things my ideal government would do when it comes to power is to have a bonfire of post-1997 legislation, and all this spiteful crap would be included as a matter of course.
I have visited smoking bars all over Switzerland. The ventilation equipment is so good that even when everyone around you is smoking Cuban cigars you can hardly smell a thing, and it dorsn't linger on your clothes.
DeleteIndeed. I seem to recall that Wetherspoons invested heavily in ventilation equipment which took cigarette smoke straight up and out -- and then implemented a smoking ban before it became mandatory. Sir Tim Martin most certainly can't be called stupid but he has listened to a lot of stupid people in his time.
DeleteYes, Wetherspoon's jumped the gun on the smoking ban, and banned smoking completely in some of their pubs before it became law. However, the trade, or at least the drinks trade, fell off a cliff, so they didn't take the experiment any further. They did the same on oversize glasses, which unfortunately never happened, despite being in the manifesto of the winning party at the general election - I think Labour in 2001.
DeleteLast Sunday the only spare seats indoors were too high and so I took my pint and carvery outside.
ReplyDeleteTobacco smoke was in the air but that wasn't a problem.
You've got to let it go mate, it's been nearly 20 years.
ReplyDeleteIt may have escaped your notice that this is basically a blog *about* the smoking ban. If it endures for a thousand years, it won't be any more right.
Delete