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Smoking to be banned completely in English pubs and restaurants.

  
  

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Evil Scientist
12:15 / 10.10.05
TRUTH!
 
 
Smoothly
12:16 / 10.10.05
Well, leaving aside the fact that we just don't know how ETS affects non-smokers, the government seem to be taking a far more aggressive strategy for protecting non-smoking citizens from cigarette smoke than they are for protecting, say, non-drivers from cars. Even if they were to ban leaded fuel (which it doesn't look like it will) exhaust fumes contain all sorts of noxious pollutants that are affecting the citizenry in all sorts of ways. Not to mention the thousands of people run over every year. Who's protecting me from them?

I see it as living in a wierd place where we can say it's OK to pollute the air of minors with carcinogens and mutagenics but then say drive slower if they're more likely to run out in front of you.

Whereas I see it as living in a weird place where we can say it's ok to ban smoking from public places but then merely require drivers to 'drive slower' where kids are likely to run out in front of you.

And what are they doing to protect us from drinkers bottling people in the street? Keeping pubs open later into the night, that's what.

You talk about double standards...
 
 
Loomis
12:17 / 10.10.05
Maybe we need a carbon trading scheme. Work out how many cigarettes can be smoked per hour per size of room without affecting the air quality too much. Then non-smokers can sell their portion of cigs to smokers.
 
 
pointless & uncalled for
12:40 / 10.10.05
exhaust fumes contain all sorts of noxious pollutants that are affecting the citizenry in all sorts of ways. Not to mention the thousands of people run over every year. Who's protecting me from them?

And hence the current studies looking at tighter emissions controls. I suspect an escalating mortality rate and impaired mobility is protecting you from the thousands run over every year. Unless you live in Dawn of the Dead. But in all seriousness, the measures such as higher enforcement levels, more 20mph zones along with an increase in pedestrian areas and a myriad of traffic calming measures implemented at the cost of several millions is the protection you are looking for. Primarily I would advise you to look at your community forum/council to find out more about how your area's Cleaner, Greener, Safer funding is being spent but that's more than enough of an aside.

Whereas I see it as living in a weird place where we can say it's ok to ban smoking from public places but then merely require drivers to 'drive slower' where kids are likely to run out in front of you.

Really? Creation of Home Zones and well planned traffic management has been linked with a significant decrease in the juvenile injury and mortality rate in relevant suburban areas. What makes you think it's weird

And what are they doing to protect us from drinkers bottling people in the street? Keeping pubs open later into the night, that's what.

Extended opening hours may very well be what leads to a decline in binge drinking and drink related violence. Certainly in an extra-national context such levels as we have at the moment with an 11pm licensing law are pretty much unheard of outside of Britain. In any interim period plans are in place to provide extra policing, potentially funded by those pubs which wish to open longer.
 
 
Smoothly
12:50 / 10.10.05
What makes you think it's weird

I think it's weird because I see the former as a huge over reaction compared with the latter. I'm all for measures to improve the air quality in public spaces, but I think there are better, fairer ways of reducing non-smokers' exposure to tobacco than banning smoking.
 
 
Evil Scientist
13:06 / 10.10.05
Except they're not banning smoking. They're banning it in certain designated enclosed public areas where non-smokers also frequent. You can still smoke.
 
 
pointless & uncalled for
13:06 / 10.10.05
Such as?
 
 
lonely as a cloud...
13:07 / 10.10.05
Haven't noticed an Irish POV in the thread yet, so I thought I'd stick my oar in. There has been no smoking in bars, restaurants, clubs for...what,two, three years now, I think in Ireland. We have beer gardens. We don't have the weather for 'em, but dammit, we use 'em anyway. They usually have heaters and perspex roofs anyway. Some pubs were awful right after the ban - in that the smell of smoke was replaced by the stink of stale beer and manky upholstery. Some pubs have little canopies out front. Nearly all pubs have ashtrays on the wall by the main entrance, with cute little slogans on 'em, like "Does my butt look big in this?".
Basically - speaking as someone who's been smoking for longer than I've been going to pubs - you get used to it very quickly. And it does encourage you to chat with complete strangers. It can be a bonding (-ing! Not -age!) experience.
 
 
Evil Scientist
13:12 / 10.10.05
That sounds like a reasonable solution.
 
 
pointless & uncalled for
13:13 / 10.10.05
Above post aimed at Smoothly.

Except they're not banning smoking. They're banning it in certain designated enclosed public areas where non-smokers also frequent. You can still smoke.

This is true. It really needs to stop being refered to as a smoking ban and refered to as a smoking limitation, and a fairly small one at that. It's a very small fraction of the country that is being affected by this. As for all of that Britain is too fucking freezing to go outside business, absolute fucking bollocks. I've been happy to step out for a burn in three foot of snow without any real discomfort. Are you seriously trying to tell me that you don't smoke outside between December and February?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
13:25 / 10.10.05
Not standing still.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
17:37 / 10.10.05
When I stopped smoking at work some years ago, I really missed the comradely huddle outside the building in all weathers. The various groups who'd congregate there tended to be easy bonding sessions and somehow it was always the colleagues whose company I enjoyed the most who'd constitute the sly puffers. For a while I would still go and stand outside with them on breaks and chat away as they smoked in the rain.

If I were facilitating an event for a team, it was usually a joy to chat with the few other social lepers having a fag in the breaks. Certainly much more pleasant than the awkwardness of having to join a group of strangers for lunch at those events would be.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
17:49 / 10.10.05
Of course it's not too cold to smoke outside... but it IS too cold to sit in a beer garden enjoying a pint.
 
 
Triplets
19:45 / 10.10.05
Unless your's has fancy outdoor heaters like mine. Muaha.
 
 
w1rebaby
19:58 / 10.10.05
Those heaters aren't that good though unless you sit right underneath them - and they're fantastically wasteful of energy.

Just because I'm a fag-chuffer doesn't mean I can't be a tree-hugger as well.
 
 
waxy dan
20:17 / 10.10.05
Amusingly, every hardware store in Dublin ran out of the gas heaters within days of the ban. *Every* pharmacist ran out of nicorette patches by noon on the first day.

It worked really well in Ireland. I neither saw, nor even heard of, one incident of staff having to throw someone out, or bad words exchanged. Radio shows started proclaiming smoking as the speed-dating method for the masses.

Worked a treat. To be honest, I don't really get the half-ass treatment here in the UK. Either ban it (which has worked in other countries) or don't (which has also worked in other countries) after a reasonable period of public debate... which has well and truly passed.
 
 
fuckbaked
05:05 / 11.10.05
I live in California, where it's been illegal to smoke in bars for, um, I think it's almost 8 years now. I thought it was annoying when it first happened, but now I prefer it (I wasn't going to bars back then, but I'd go places to see bands play, and I was a smoker, as I still am, so I did notice). I don't want to smoke indoors with nonsmokers around. I know it doesn't get as cold here as it does there, although I am one of those people who gets cold very easily, and since I work during the night, I'm used to bundling up in the dead of winter at 4 am to go outside for a smoke. What worries me is when they start banning it in outside areas. There are towns in California where you can't smoke within 20 feet of a door, window, or air intake, which means that you not only can't smoke in a bar, but you can't just walk outside to smoke either. To actually abide by that law you'd pretty much have to leave the entire downtown area to smoke. I don't think anyone does, though. My school has a policy like that which, um, I think it's 25 feet. And I see signs that say "no smoking on science hill" which doesn't refer to a little hill but rather a large area with a lot of buildings. Most people don't abide by that, though. As long as you're not near enough to the buildings for the smoke to get in, and you're not in an area that people walk though, people don't usually say anything. I had someone tell me not to smoke in such an area once. He said he was warning me in case someone else asked me not to smoke. I don't understand why he would ask me not to smoke if he personally doesn't care, but whatever. Actually, I've found that a lot of people don't abide by the smoking policy at my school, especially the science hill part, whereas at the school that I used to go to, absolutely no one smoked in the areas where they weren't allowed to. The only places where we were allowed to smoke there were in parking lots.

Oh, and the bar thing...there are still bars here where you can smoke. I'm pretty sure it's still illegal, but I know of a few bars where you can smoke, and I don't even go to bars very often. I guess it depends on how well enforced it is. I figure if a nonsmoker is going to hang out in one of the bars where you can smoke, then they're agreeing to put up with second hand smoke, because there are plenty of bars where they could go to not be around smoke.
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
05:26 / 11.10.05
Weird; where I am in Canada - which isn't across the board for the country, natch - the smoking limitation has been in effect for quite some time. No smoking in pubs, restaurants, clubs - just no smoking in enclosed spaces, basically. People don't really complain about having to go outside, you just get pockets of smoker culture opening up just outside the front doors. It's been around for what? At least ten years.
 
 
Mike Modular
07:11 / 11.10.05
which isn't across the board for the country

Yeah, I was over in Calgary earlier this year and their new smoking rules were strange: Bars had to have a warning sign if they allowed smoking and most of the ones that did didn't allow it outside. So as not to set a bad example to passing young people, apparently (!)

My work has just banned smoking in its green room/bar area. Which is fine in the daytime, when we all just converge on the balcony outside every so often, but have noticed the inconvenience in the evenings when drinking (the whole guarding tables and abandoning friends routine). Plus, there've been some really cold nights lately! (Although current London weather is all over the place). In a way, I'd hope the new restrictions might make me give up for good, but it's never that simple...
 
 
babazuf
07:30 / 11.10.05
I suggest that we smokers buy a cigarette packet each and build a funerary pyre in a very public place. This would of course be set alight - both a symbolic farewell to the smokers that have gone before and a viciously hilarious irony.

Me, a bastard? Nah.
 
 
Rage
08:28 / 11.10.05
This will just encourage teenagers to smoke because of how very very banned it is. There is no better combination than teens and cigarettes. They look cool. So very very cool. Especially at the mall. Hot teenage mall smoking. Set that shit on fiiiiah...
 
 
babazuf
09:47 / 11.10.05
What are you talking about? Smoking is cool. There's nothing quite like a half-spent fag hanging out of your mouth and a cloud of blue smoke around your head to say "Clamp me down and dominate me."

And who doesn't find smoking pubescent girls in tacky underwire bras, badly applied lipstick and fuck-me boots attractive, now honestly?
 
 
pointless & uncalled for
09:52 / 11.10.05
You're Phil Doherty and I claim my tin of baked beans with pork sausages.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:39 / 11.10.05
And who doesn't find smoking pubescent girls in tacky underwire bras, badly applied lipstick and fuck-me boots attractive, now honestly

Dunno. Which end do you light?
 
 
pointless & uncalled for
11:43 / 11.10.05
The other one.
 
 
babazuf
11:59 / 11.10.05
Dunno. Which end do you light?

Kekekeke. Crazy sons of bitches.
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:43 / 11.10.05
This will just encourage teenagers to smoke because of how very very banned it is. There is no better combination than teens and cigarettes. They look cool. So very very cool. Especially at the mall. Hot teenage mall smoking. Set that shit on fiiiiah...

Because of course teenagers don't smoke usually as a form of rebellion do they? No sir, never see a teenager smoking a crafty fag. Only a ban in pubs (where most teenagers can't actually go without fake id) can engineer these healthy non-smoking teens to smoke. Please.

Once again, it isn't a total ban. Live with it and smoke in your houses. Or freeze on the streets. It isn't my problem. There are bigger freedoms being infringed in the world than someone not being able to smoke in a pub. Christ!

...

I'm, umm, I'm going over to the Rage thread to vent. I may be some time.

(sheepish smile)
 
 
Smoothly
14:03 / 11.10.05
Someone needs a fag.
 
 
Evil Scientist
14:28 / 11.10.05
Cigs are for weak Southmen. I smoke the bones of my enemies, ground beneath my feet and wrapped in the shrouds of their grieving women!
 
 
Loomis
14:50 / 11.10.05
You need a car Smoothly. The one thing I miss about owning a car is that ciggies taste far better inside a car.

Speaking of which, what happened to that pub in Ireland that got around the smoking ban by parking a bus outside for people to smoke in?
 
 
Smoothly
15:11 / 11.10.05
God, you’re right Loomis. I’d almost forgotten. I was going to say something about the relative pleasure of various smoking environments in response to some of the comments about the ban just meaning that we have to step outside, but I’m a bit biz.
However, I too find cars to be one of the most conducive venues for smoking. I remember many a happy long distance trip in my old Polo – specially pimped with foil-lined door pockets for the purpose.
 
 
Loomis
19:25 / 11.10.05
I’d be interested in that discussion Smoothly.

The pleasure of smoking in the car could be something to do with using those car ciggie lighters. I'm sure I've mentioned them in another thread somewhere. I wonder if we could invent portable versions? There's just something about the way the end of the cigarette barbeques on the surface of the little grille.

I agree that the act of smoking is changed according to the venue, which may be purely psychological or may have something to do with the movement of air and the way the smoke is held in the space or trapped in the fabric or furniture, carpets, etc. Cars provide an optimum smoking environment because they get enough air not to be overly smoky but they retain enough of the smell to alert your smoking sense and trigger positive associations (or am I reading too much into it?). I love the smell of a smoker's car.

I must add here that I find it puzzling that so many smokers dislike the smell of smoke, whether fresh or stale. While I will concede that the smell of your living room the morning after a party where a hundred cigarettes were smoked is less than pleasant, the accumulated smell of countless cigarettes smoked in a room over a longer period of time is something I quite like. That kind of grandpa smell. Very relaxing. I’ve never been particularly fond of smoking outdoors, but then again I’m not exactly the outdoorsy type. But I find that I taste the smoke less and feel it going into my lungs less when smoking outdoors. Maybe it’s something to do with the loss of the ambient smoke. As passive smokers remind us, there is plenty of smoke produced that doesn’t get inhaled initially.

Not that this is to whinge about the smoking “restriction”. But sometimes I like to remind non-smokers that smoking isn’t simply an addiction that needs to be satiated any old how. Smoking is a pleasurable activity and there are a variety of factors that contribute to this pleasure.
 
 
Ganesh
19:36 / 11.10.05
Although a non-smoker, I'm by no means TEH TOBACOFACSIST!!1!! but I have to say reading the last couple of posts about the pleasures of cigarette smoke in cars is physically turning my stomach - so much so that I'm finding myself looking for associated memories to explain my visceral blehness. I suspect it dates back to childhood holidays in the 1970s, lo-o-ong Aberdeen-to-Dover-to-Brittany car journeys (which always made me feel vomity anyway) with both parents furiously chain-smoking, until the interior was blue with smoke. Utter claustrophobic, hot, nauseous misery.

S'about the memories, I guess. It even bothers me when a taxi driver lights up.
 
 
Loomis
19:56 / 11.10.05
That sounds fairly grim, Ganesh. It's like you had the classic locked in a cupboard and forced to smoke the entire pack treatment, only you didn't get to smoke them yourself.

I didn't have any experiences like that while young which no doubt goes some way to explaining my positive spin on the activity, in the face of plenty of negative evidence. Neither of my parents smoked, and few relatives. Both grandfathers lived into their eighties, depsite smoking heavily up till their late sixties. Mind you I had two alocholics in the family and that didn't put me off drinking, so there you go.
 
 
Ganesh
20:05 / 11.10.05
Perhaps if your relatives had forced you to drink until you puked, you might've been put off alcohol, Loomis - or, more analogously to my own experience, forced to imbibe in a situation where you were constantly on the verge of puking anyway. I think this association between claustrophic passive smoking and retching my guts up is probably the major factor in me never even trying to smoke.
 
  

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