jonny_greenings_sock
Well-known member
Smoking in public is in truth a bit of a selfish act, but so is drinking 8 pints and being rowdy, driving a fast oversized car down quiet country roads where kids might be playing, eating so much that you clog up the NHS for years and barely fit into an airplane seat, having casual sex with loads of people and hoarding investment properties so families can't afford to buy a house. The thing is, all of these things are legal, normal and part of the freedoms of life.
It becomes an argument about whether governments / other people should be legislating which sins & pleasures we're allowed to do and where; but not being bold enough to outright ban them because they still want to bank the tax from them.
The compromise with the indoor smoking ban was that people who want the smoke free environment can enjoy the inside (and it's much more enjoyable given British weather), and the smokers can still sit outside with a beer and a cig. And it was a hell of a compromise - bear in mind about 20% of people smoked when this came in. Let's do a thought experiment where 20% of drivers overnight get their speed limited to 20mph because their cars are deemed too sinful and socially unacceptable, even though they're still road legal and you can buy them everywhere. 20% doesn't really cover it though, because in pubs it was more like 40% of people who smoked, beer gardens are generally busier than inside even now because groups of people always have a few people who enjoy smoking so everyone sits outside with them, and frankly the people who spend most of their time, money and enjoyment in pubs are/were much more likely to smoke - I didn't see many families with kids at the bar doing alldayers on Sundays or having a few pints Tue-Fri like I did in my 20s. Pubs, fundamentally, aren't healthy places; they aren't really supposed to be. I'm still surprised everyone didn't just outright ignore the smoking ban (like they do in Greece and Croatia), it's only enforceable by the power of wanting to compromise for the sake of other people.
It is unpleasant eating next to people smoking, I don't like it. So I eat inside, or go to one of the many choices of restaurants where it's banned. Non-smokers have that option, smokers don't. The thing that bothers people about the proposed ban is that smoking is selfish, but it's even more selfish for the people who take their adorable kids to the pub for the one sunny day of the year to now demand that smoking is banned outside too so they can enjoy the beer garden for 2 hours with their orange juice, despite the fact that the guy with the pint and the fag is there for the other 364 days of the year come rain or shine, because it's his main pleasure.
I think that restaurants are for eating, pubs are for drinking. Pubs that specialise in food is a new middle ground, and like you I think they should have the freedom to decide which one they want to go for. If the pub wants to completely ban smoking, that's fine, but has to be the choice of the individual business and customers can make their choice whether to go there or not. A few people have mentioned the Australia model but it varies, some have outdoor dining areas as not allowed to smoke, some states have smoking totally banned outside. I've been outside pubs in Sydney, in the middle of the afternoon with no other customers, where the landlord stood next to us to make sure we were standing 3 metres away from our pints because it's illegal to have cigarettes in the "beer garden" and also illegal to have alcohol in your hand "outside of the beer garden". Beyond absurd, an arbitrary line in the middle of an open air street where presumably if you do both things at once, society will immediately break down and everyone will die.
I'd go even further and say the Berlin model is the best compromise, where if smaller pubs want to be pubs where people can smoke, so be it. Everyone knows what they're signing up for, the people who like it like it and the others don't have to go there. In the end pubs and clubs are about getting intoxicated, humans have been doing that for as long as we've been walking. I'm not going to tell people what they can and can't do just because I don't agree with what they do for pleasure; it would be selfish of me to expect the world to bend to my will.
I hate being around weekend binge drinkers, they're noisy and aggressive and unpredictable and cost the NHS a fortune in money and hassle. I don't want them banned though, I just avoid them.
(Not having a go at you btw, your point is very well argued and it's a very interesting debate!)
