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Time for action on smoking in pubs
by Gary White
We've all experienced it—an otherwise excellent night, drinking fine beer with your friends or partner, maybe a meal too, with so many pubs serving more than acceptable food these days, only for things to be ruined by having to inhale other peoples' cigarette smoke. Later, outside the pub or at home, you realise that your clothes and hair reek of smoke. I'd rather not think about the insides of my lungs!
Let me make no apology for my stance as a non-smoker, though I would not really label myself an anti-smoker. I just think it's time for some common sense and to bring Britain out of the Dark Ages. In many ways, pubs have become the last bastion of the smoker: possibly the only place in the modern (public) arena where one can smoke with impunity. Of course, some pubs, notably those run by the Wetherspoons chain, have created non-smoking areas but these are limited in their effectiveness due to being far too small and easily polluted by smoke drifting from the adjoining (usually much bigger) smoking area. Pubs are frightened to threaten the status quo due to the perceived threat to business, even though a majority of the adult public (and, interestingly possibly 95% of active CAMRA members) do not smoke. I sometimes wonder if the fact that many publicans seem to smoke is a barrier to reform. I personally know of a dozen or more people who would go to pubs more often (or would actually go to pubs at all) if pubs were less smoky. We need a level playing field, so pubs are competing fairly with each other. Which means we need legislation.
Surely, it's time for pubs above a certain size to have compulsory smoking areas, with a majority of the pub being non-smoking as of rights, in much the same way that inter-city trains have one carriage out of say eight or ten, where one can smoke. This would more equitably reflect the smoking—non-smoking composition of the population. What do readers think?
Reproduced from the Full Pint, Issue 11.
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