Simon Clark
Director of ForestSimon Clark, is director of the smokers’ rights group Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco). Founded in 1979, Forest represents adults who choose to smoke tobacco and non-smoking adults who are tolerant of other people’s enjoyment of tobacco.
Confirmation that the government wants to extend the indoor smoking ban to outdoor spaces, including beer gardens, has provoked anger and a sense of déjà vu among opponents of the plan.
In 2020 an amendment to the Business and Planning Bill that would have banned smoking in the new outside pavement areas was withdrawn after the Conservative government rejected the idea that smoking should be prohibited in all outdoor seating areas that were licensed to serve food and drink.
According to a statement, ‘The government will not ban outdoor smoking. Since the existing [indoor] ban was introduced, businesses have invested heavily in their outdoor areas and banning outdoor smoking would lead to significant closures and job losses.’
Keep It Local
That remains the position today and it seems to be working well because, although local authorities have the power to ban smoking in licensed pavement areas, only a handful have chosen to do so, which suggests there is very little demand to extend the indoor ban to outside areas when more liberal solutions, based on tolerance, common sense and pragmatism, already exist.
Despite this, the newly elected Labour government wants to by-pass local authorities and impose a nationwide ban on smoking outside pubs, bars and restaurants, taking what should be a local issue out of the hands of local people and local businesses.
At stake is the ability of cafes, pubs and bars to choose policies on smoking that work best for them and their customers without unnecessary and intrusive government intervention.
Smoking Ban Was Devastating For Pubs
Advocates of the government’s plan deny the policy will have a significant impact on the hospitality industry. However, the effect of the indoor smoking ban was devastating for many pubs and clubs.
In 2017, ten years after the introduction of the ban, figures showed there were 11,383 fewer pubs in England compared to 2006, before the ban was introduced, an astonishing decline of 20.7 per cent.
While the loss of pubs was part of a long-term trend and wasn’t exclusively due to the smoking ban, another report found there was a clear acceleration in pub closures in the year after bans were enforced in Ireland (2004), Scotland (2006), England and Wales (2007).
Those that survived and sometimes flourished were often pubs with beer gardens and other outdoor areas that could be developed to create a comfortable environment for smokers and non-smokers alike.
Today, if the government goes ahead with its plan, many of those pubs could be at risk too, together with thousands of jobs, if another generation of smokers is driven away to smoke and drink at home.
Education Not Coercion
There is no evidence that exposure to tobacco smoke in the open air is a significant risk to anyone else’s heath, including children. Perhaps knowing this, ministers were quick to switch from talking up the harm of passive smoking outside to declaring that the proposed ban is actually to ‘encourage’ smokers to quit.
It is no business of government if adults choose to purchase and consume a legal product. While there are some smokers who want to stop smoking, and perhaps wish they had never started, there are millions who enjoy smoking or take comfort from their habit.
A report commissioned by the smokers’ rights group Forest and conducted by the Centre for Substance Use Research in 2016 found that over 90 per cent of the 600+ respondents (who were classified as ‘confirmed smokers’) gave pleasure as the reason they smoked.
For that reason they were willing to accept the risk to their health, and in a tolerant, liberal society that is their right as long as they don’t harm other people’s health.
Banning smoking in the open air (where they are potentially harming no-one other than themselves) goes way beyond education or encouragement. It’s coercion, and it’s designed to force adults to quit a perfectly legitimate habit.
Smoking Rates Already At Their Lowest Level
What makes the policy so shocking and unnecessary is that smoking rates have been falling across all age groups for decades and are currently at their lowest recorded levels.
In general, however, the largest drop in numbers has rarely been the result of anti-smoking legislation introduced by successive governments. Indeed, there is very little evidence that policies such as the smoking ban or standardised packaging of tobacco have had any significant impact on smoking rates at all.
Yes, the number of smokers has fallen, and continue to fall, but the decline in the smoking rate after the introduction of the smoking ban, for example, was merely in line with historical trends. There is very little evidence that the ban itself had a major impact on smoking rates.
After 2012, however, there was a significant fall in the number of smokers in the UK, but that decline coincided not with the smoking ban but with the rise of vaping as more and more smokers voluntarily switched to a reduced risk alternative to smoking.
Pubs Aren’t Health Clubs
Artist David Hockney, 87 this year and still a confirmed smoker, has argued that ‘pubs aren’t health clubs’, and he’s right. Most people go to a pub to relax and unwind with their friends, enjoy a drink or three, eat a high calorie snack and, in some cases, smoke a cigarette. Smoking, says Hockney, is good for his mental health and who’s to say he’s wrong? It’s his life, not the government’s.
TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson also got it right when he erected a sign in the garden of his new pub, The Farmer’s Dog in Oxfordshire. It reads: ‘You might like smoking – others might not – if you smoke please be considerate’.
If local authorities were to suggest a similar sign in all beer gardens and other outdoor spaces where smoking is permitted by the licensee, who could reasonably object?
Final Thought
What we are witnessing is a war on choice and individual freedom. If we continue on this righteous path to ‘good’ health we risk creating a society in which government makes every significant decision for us and, one by one, personal freedoms we once took for granted will be slowly erased on the altar of public health.
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