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Smoking to be banned completely in English pubs and restaurants.

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14:25 / 09.10.05

The Observer says smoking is set to be banned completely in pubs and restaurants in England after cabinet ministers united to demand a U-turn on plans for a partial ban.
Full article here.

I don´t know what to make of this. I don´t smoke, so such a law wouldn´t affect me. But it seems pointless. Smoking is an addiction, so people will either smoke on the toilet or go outside from time to time.

Now from reading in conversation and gathering, I know the Barbeloids to be a pubcrawl friendly lot.

So discuss, will this affect you? Do you approve, or do smoke and feel discriminated? Do you get withdrawal syndrome just reading about it?

14:30 / 09.10.05

Another non-smoker here, with lots of friends who do smoke. Anticipating having to sit nursing a drink while I 'keep the table' during those periods where everyone else nips outside for a cigarette. Grrreat.

14:44 / 09.10.05

I would be happy just for a ban on ladies that smoke by holding the cigarette behind them at an angle, and blow the smoke to other tables. If you don't like the smoke what makes you think that I will, you morons...

14:52 / 09.10.05

I'd be happy for a ban on casual use of the word "ladies".

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:53 / 09.10.05

Smoking is an addiction, so people will either smoke on the toilet or go outside from time to time.

Precisely. Works for me.

14:57 / 09.10.05

Ganesh, I used the word Ladies for specific reason - nothing casual I can assure you, it describes a type perfectly for me, a type that I wished to describe. Perhaps I was flippent in presuming that others would know this, but I stand by its use on this occasion.

14:58 / 09.10.05

Precisely. Works for me.

Agreed. Unless you really need to relieve yourself and all possibilities are blocked by addicts.

If you don't like the smoke what makes you think that I will, you morons...

There´s a weird phenomenon: The smoke will always drift to the non-smoker. Happens to me all the time.

All Acting Regiment

15:01 / 09.10.05

To the government: Banning. Unhealthy. Things. Makes. Them. Cooler. You. Twats.

15:05 / 09.10.05

I'm pretty happy about this, one thing I really dislike about going out is all the smoke, and having your hair and clothes reek of smoke the next day.

I am surprised about the total ban though. Would this include clubs do you think?

Z

15:19 / 09.10.05

Well, it won't apply to private clubs, which i expect will become more popular and more smokey as soon as a ban comes into force.

I feel fairly utilitarian about this. If the ban pleases more people than it bothers then I'm basically okay with it. It will keep me out of regular pubs, bars and restaurants (which kinda sucks for me) but the rest of London will probably breathe a big clean sigh of relief about that.

15:23 / 09.10.05

I'd much rather see a ban on crap guitarists and loud music played in pubs on a saturday night myself. I'm fucking sick to the back teeth of not being able to find anywhere quiet for a drink on a saturday night.

15:24 / 09.10.05

But I think this is detracting from what should be the main issue of the day; video game censorship...

15:49 / 09.10.05

I'm having a touch of deja vu, like there's been a thread like this before....

Anyway, we've had a bar/restaurant smoking ban here in Boston for over two years. Hasn't been a problem. I'm not a smoker, but all of my friends are, and they say they don't really mind stepping out for a butt. It's kind of a social thing and an opportunity to chat with people you normally wouldn't have. It's a breath of fresh air and change of scenery.

Ganesh, I know what you're saying about being left in the bar while everyone smokes - that's me. It happens sometimes, but other times people make an effort to leave someone behind to keep me company.

One unexpected side effect of the smoking ban - you suddenly realize how much your local pub REEKS. It's a funky ass smell without the cloak of cig smoke. Also more BO issues in the void.

15:58 / 09.10.05

I'm having a touch of deja vu, like there's been a thread like this before....

Possible. There have been smoking bans like these in Paris, New York and Dublin as well. Maybe we had threads, when these bans came to life?

16:01 / 09.10.05

Here, for starters:

Smoking Ban in NYC

Smoking in NYC

16:31 / 09.10.05

I'm not a smoker, but all of my friends are, and they say they don't really mind stepping out for a butt. It's kind of a social thing and an opportunity to chat with people you normally wouldn't have. It's a breath of fresh air and change of scenery.

I don't know what it's like in Boston, but in the UK it can get fucking freezing in the winter, and it rains a lot all year round. Neither conditions are very conducive to enjoying a cigarette in my experience.

It's a ban in restaurants that bothers me most. There are alternatives to pubs and bars, which are broadly interchangeable and it's not so hard to find a substitute. But I can't get the food I can get in my favourite restaurants anywhere else, and I can't recreate it at home. And if I'm dining with just one other person, it's antisocial to take it in turns to abandon the other for the crucial inter-course ciggies, and leaving together frightens the management alert to the athlete's discount. The thought of my choice of restaurants being reduced so catastrophically by a smoking ban is hugely depressing to me. I know that people allergic to ETS find themselves in that position at present, but I wish a compromise could be found instead of this.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

16:45 / 09.10.05

Boston is never cold!

17:53 / 09.10.05

I found it a pain in the arse when I went to Boston, just for a visit, although that wasn't enough time to get used to it of course. In general it's sort of bearable if you're sitting right by the door in a relatively empty place, but if you're not or it isn't, having to spend five minutes getting out is very annoying and disrupts any conversation you might be having. Popping in for a pint and a fag and a read of the paper on the way home from work will disappear entirely as far as I'm concerned, and in general I'll definitely be going to pubs less, those without beer gardens or outside seats anyway. The cost-benefit analysis of going to the pub vs just going home is going to be swung towards home.

18:01 / 09.10.05

I don't know what it's like in Boston, but in the UK it can get fucking freezing in the winter, and it rains a lot all year round. Neither conditions are very conducive to enjoying a cigarette in my experience.

Dude, you're fucking kidding me, right? We were buried in snow last winter. It was in the teens (Fahrenheit) more often than not. New Englanders are fucking tough. Maybe it'll do you Old Englanders some good, grow a thicker hide.

Seriously though, I can't tell you how much people bitched and moaned here just before the ban took effect. Everyone predicted the bars would be empty and businesses ruined. And I can't tell you how quickly everyone adapted and it became a non-issue.

18:08 / 09.10.05

The thing is though that, even on the east coast, smoking bans in new areas in the States are less of a jump than they are in the UK (at least, that's been my judgement). I think a better comparison might be Ireland. I've heard that it's not been too problematic there but to be honest the reports are very sketchy and I don't know anyone who's provided personal observations.

18:38 / 09.10.05

Yeah, forgive my ignorance, ibis.

I hear the 'You'll get used to it' argument a lot. 'People bitched when smoking was banned on the tube...' etc. I know I should stop whining and adapt, but, like fridge, I reckon lots of people will adapt by not going to pubs and restaurants. I'm lucky in that I belong to a club which will be immune to the ban and live where it's easy to get friends over to my place for the traditional post-work wind-down. At the risk of coming over a bit John Reid, it'll blow harder for people who don't have those options.

19:03 / 09.10.05

What I find frustrating about this is that I've got no desire to annoy other people with smoke - I don't mind not being able to smoke on tubes and buses and in cinemas and in the office, because I know people around me may not like it, and it makes them smell anyway. But when I go to a drug den I expect to be able to take the drugs that that den has historically allowed to be taken. I don't mind if there are smoking and non-smoking areas, that then becomes a negotiation between me and my peers as to where the general party wants to sit, I'll move across. I don't mind not smoking at the bar. Shit, I'd even pay an extra entrance fee as a smoker to pay for air conditioning or other extra costs associated with dealing with my addiction.

Ah, I said all this on the NYC smoking ban thread and I remember what a fight that turned into, there's no point going over it all again.

toughest, fastest, fatest

19:21 / 09.10.05

i reckon the ban is a good idea i love pubs but hate being given cancer by others, they should really ban selfish types from smoking in bus shelters that really pisses me off, especially when it's raining.

toughest, fastest, fatest

19:22 / 09.10.05

actually just having seperate smoking and non smoking reas is probably fairer - however i'm not going to shed any tears over the ban

19:29 / 09.10.05

i love pubs but hate being given cancer by others

That´s a good point.

For personal reasons, I´m worried I might get this sickness sometime. And I think of it the moment I smell cigarette smoke. That makes relaxing at a pub a bit difficult for me.

That´s what makes this drug even more problematic. I don´t get drunk or a hangover if people around me drink. But if they smoke, I inhale smoke too.

And it´s been only a couple of years, that smoking has been banned at the workingspace here.
When I made my colleague (I shared the same room with him) go outside for smoking, he was so angry, he didn´t speak with me for three days.

19:35 / 09.10.05

But none of that necessitates a full-spectrum ban. I'm fine if I have to go to special smoking bars to smoke in, that only smokers went to, where you bought your drinks in a non-smoking area so that the bar staff weren't exposed. (Obviously I'd prefer to be able to smoke where I want, but life's not like that.) I'd just like to have the opportunity to do so. This doesn't provide for that at all.

19:40 / 09.10.05

A bit like fridgemagnet, I'm not sure that I want to retread old ground, but Mist, you might want to question the assumption that other people smoking will kill you (while other people drinking won't). See my argument with Nina in the second thread I linked to above for more on that.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:43 / 09.10.05

Yes, I agree with fridge. I'd like to have the option...

My main worry about this is what happens to my stuff while I go outside for a fag? I'm quite partial to spending the afternoon sat in a pub on my own, reading, with nobody there to look sfter my stuff, seat, or most importantly pint. Once in a while staff'll usually keep an eye on it while you go for a piss or whatever, but they're gonna get pretty pissed off pretty quickly if it's that frequent.

19:50 / 09.10.05

In Scotland there'll be a complete pub and restaurant ban from next year - March, I think.
Personally, I'm glad - I look forward to not smelling of (and breathing) smoke, and really enjoyed it in pubs in Dublin and New Zealand. But I do understand how people feel - I used to smoke, and smoke a lot, and I would have been really pissed off if they'd brought in this sort of law back then. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out and how people adapt.
One comment from a friend in NZ, though - she dislikes it, because she likes to sit outside to eat (this is in Auckland, where it's more viable than the UK!) and is now annoyed because because it's a smokefest out there.

19:53 / 09.10.05

stoatie: it'll be like going to the loo. You either take your shit with you or you trust the locals.

20:09 / 09.10.05

I know I should stop whining and adapt, but, like fridge, I reckon lots of people will adapt by not going to pubs and restaurants.

Oh, no, by all means - whine all you like, it's only natural. I just mean that people adapt after it's all said and done. I'm thinking in particular of one friend of mine who didn't just smoke, he LOVED smoking. He loved smoking, he loved drinking, he loved the bar, he loved to take a stand and get indignant. He swore up & down he'd stop going to his bar and travel to other towns when the ban took effect. And what happened to him? Absolutely nothing. Life went on as normal except he stepped outside for a smoke.

So bitch & moan while you can, hell, it makes for good pub conversation. You can chat up any & all cute strangers and bartenders by moaning about the smoking ban. But life will go on pretty much as it always has.

20:23 / 09.10.05

While I'd love to be satisfied with your perception of the behaviour of your friends, ibis, I think that in the end I will make my own decisions as to how I change my behaviour, if at all, regarding this ban. And it's wonderful that this will provide "good conversation" on the side.

21:28 / 09.10.05

Wow, that seemed a little... unnecessarily hostile. I'll just be crawling back into my shell now.

21:39 / 09.10.05

The point being that "oh yeah you'll bitch now but you'll be fine with it when it happens, I don't smoke but I think my friend doesn't mind really, life goes on" might be construed as being just ever so slightly patronising and dismissive.

22:05 / 09.10.05

That's the only downside I can see to this. Sitting in a pub with smoker friends all craving nicotine won't be fun when they all start getting grumpy.

Otherwise, from a purely selfish pov, I'm quite happy with it. I can remember when people could smoke just about anywhere and have seen the shrinking of the smoker's world and the huge change in social attitudes over the last quarter century. Throughout most of it I was a chain smoker myself and I still smoke now and then.

I can remember smoking in cinemas, on buses, on aircraft, in classrooms (as a student nurse). I couldn't make an argument in favour of any of those now, so this seems like a logical next step. I haven't smoked in a restaurant in years anyway.

I don't envy the frontline bar workers having to enforce this on drunken, nicotine-hungry punters though. I wonder how that has been managed elsewhere? When we first made tentative steps towards changing the cigarette culture in psychiatric hospitals in the 1990's, I remember the Clinical Director explicitly commanding us to tell patients smoking in corridors to stub it out.

We turned a blind eye instead until the day the Clinical Director tried telling a chap to stub his fag out and was flattened for his presumption. The exhortations to tackle corridor smoking abated for a while. Psychiatric hospitals still have a special exemption in the H&S legislation.

The step around the corner from this one will be trying to regulate smoking in the home. That concerns me much more. Health and social care workers clock who smokes and who doesn't and where and when they smoke when they visit you in your own home. If there are children in the home, they'll increasingly make an issue of it. If you tried to foster or adopt these days and were a smoker, it would be a factor they'd weigh up.

If the passive smoking issue is serious enough to push forward legislation to stop you being exposed to it for a few hours in a bar, the effect of smoke on kids and others in the home whom you're around for much longer than that is bound to be the next focus of debate.

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