Puffed Up Or Dragged Out - The Pros And Cons Of The UK Smoking Ban

On July 1st in the UK, it will be a day like no other day - the smoking ban will hit with a vengeance, but who will benefit? You would think all of us, but you would be wrong

In the UK, we will take our final puffs of 'fresh air' as many smokers call it and stub out the very last of the ciggies in ashtrays around the country confined within four walls of any public area. For that day, smoking will be banned in all indoor public areas. The ban will eventually take us to the comfort of our own homes for a drag with very little else where to go.

Surely the results should be good, and as an ex-smoker myself (it still feels odd to say that, personally) I kicked the weed a year ago after twenty years of the addiction. I know, I can feel the slaps on my back and the warm hand shakes from here thank you, but we have to ask ourselves is getting people to pack up really the answer?

It will effect us all, man, woman and child, smoker and non smoker and anyone who thinks different should take a second look. It is an addiction we fell in love with during the War years, when the silver screen was glamorous and lovers lit up to a back drop of air raid sirens and flashes of doodle bugs hitting the streets. We read books on the subject and our pitted love affair with the cigarette lingers like the very last drag still wafting through the eternal air. Yet are we know living in a dictatorial society, where a futuristic vision will be of secret smoking and search lights after dark hunting out smokers like smoke seeking missiles and loud hailers ready to shout something similar to, "come out with your hands up!" It is certainly not as extreme as I had already thought.

Yet we are fascinated with the small stick which is becoming increasingly untouchable, like Eve and the Forbidden fruit, there are still many of us who will crave that pleasurable inhaled cocktail of chemicals - sad, but alas, true.

Yet the UK government has decided to call time on our rendezvous with rat poison and bring the final nicotine stained curtain down once and fall all. The men in black suits are the people who govern our lives and tell us what is right and what is wrong. After all, most of the time, we just take their word for it. We understand what the ban means for us as a nation and how much it will save on taxes, the NHS and medical science, but what will it mean for us as individuals. As one BBC reporter put it, "nothing in life is exempt."

How about thinking about it in a different way. If you have been or are a smoker, how did you start? The law, as it stands in the UK will force smokers out onto the streets, in the face of the passing public. Suddenly - smoke and the cigarette is now on show.

Picture this; you are with your friends at the bar, they step outside for a fag which leaves you alone with your drink. Do you go out and join them to save yourself from looking like a nerd all alone? Many would, and this is how most of us started in the first place, because our mates were doing it.

One man, Andy Hughes from the already smoke banned Scotland, had this to say,

[quote]"If the smoking ban in Scotland had not been introduced I would still be a non-smoker. I started because I was being left in pubs and clubs alone for long periods of time, while the rest of my group were outside chatting and having a smoke. I put up with it for a few weeks but in the end I decided to join them. Being an asthmatic, I had always been against smoking. I never used to let anyone smoke in my car or house. When someone smoked in my company in a pub, I couldn't wait until they had finished their cigarette. It was still something I had a real dislike of and a habit I considered to be disgusting. Now I'll regularly smoke up to 20 cigarettes on a night out. I still don't smoke when not out having a drink and I hope it stays that way. There's no doubt a lot of good has come from the smoking ban, it's a lot more pleasurable having a drink in a smoke-free atmosphere and I'm sure healthier for bar staff and non-smokers, but for myself it has come at a price." [/quote]

It is certainly worth thinking about. I guess most of us would not want to believe that man's story and yes, there will be the very few who will probably be the same as him. Very few, I say again, but all the same, an added number.

We go back to the previous idea of the vision of the future of people being reduced to smoking at home. Instead of waiting until the baby sitter has arrived, they will light up at home, where many of them have children. The dangers of passive smoking then irrupts from within the home instead of the confines of the local boozer. What do you make of this theory? True? Surely if we are to protect anyone with this ban, it has got to be the future generations, never mind ourselves. We are all adults with our own minds. If someone wants to go to an early grave, then let them. Just don't take the children first.

What will the ban do to Global Warming? There seems to be now where to run to in conversation without someone bringing up the GW words. We can't turn on the TV without something like the polar caps melting or increasing hot summer weather to deal with to make us all feel bad. As if we have enough to deal with on a daily basis anyway, so again, we look at the effect of the future generations - picture this again; everyone is at the same pub. You have either joined your friends inside or out, it doesn't matter right now, so the entire pub is outside smoking away and puffing up into the atmosphere a cloud big enough to send vast communities for miles around into a sea of panic. Need I go on?

Would we really think that it would have any effect on jobs and employment other than a few thousand Benson and Hedges workers finally throwing in the towel and walking out. Chefs, yes chefs are cashing in on the ban. According to one UK employment agency, Gumtree.com, the demand for chefs has increased around the pub circuit since the ban was announced last Christmas.

Pubs are feeling the need to keep the drinkers. Smoking and drinker are old friends and such friends will never part, or will very reluctantly, so pubs can't get enough chefs to make dishes wonderful enough to entice the drinker back in to the bar. Many heavy smokers will give up on the pubs all together and reach for the local 'off licence' instead for their booze.

And finally, the worst of all cannibal predators - the paparazzi.

Many celebrities smoke, either to keep their weight down, look cool (still, it works for some) and generally cope with the pressure of the press, and it is the latter who will be waiting for them when they step outside their favourite haunt for a few puffs. Click, click, flash, flash. There's another scoop for the front page, and no doubt, it will keep the likes of us employed for a few more years before these wondrous stars kick the habit and step instead to join the rest of the world who have long since given up on the weed....

Happy writing everyone...

PJ 2008