What is wrong with the smoking ban?
I just realized that I have made nearly thirty posts here and not one of them deals with the smoking ban straight on. I've given scraps in the posts about rights and economics but now it is time to deal with the ban itself.
It is fundamentaly wrong because it is a Fascist policy. That is a word often used as an insult when the person using it runs out of logic. I am using it in a more precise way. If we read Mussolini on Fascism we find he was a kind of socialist but didn't like the methods of the communists. The communists took ownership of all businesses. His clever scheme was to leave the businesses in the hands of their private owners in name but it was for the state to control them, for the greater good. Not a whole lot of difference really. Our government sees the smoking issue in much the same light.
In 1930s Germany the government brought in very similar laws to ban smoking. They even had a doctor invent the term "passive smoking". That German government was a fascist government too. They went on to do what many believe to be the crime of the century and are now mainly known for those atrocities.
Being of the belief that we should learn lessons from history it seems entirely inappropriate to me to only think of the Nazis as the people who invented some very efficient ways of killing millions of people. If we are to be able to prevent such things from happening again we should be able to spot warnings long before gas chambers are built. The Nazi smoking ban was in place before the war started. The state propaganda machine was active long before that. We should be able to recognize propaganda for what it is if we are to be safe from governments.
We have a law that on it's face bans smoking in "public places". Because of this many smokers think they have lost something - the right to smoke. This is not true. Smokers never did have a right to smoke anywhere they pleased. If we limit the discussion to pubs then the owners of pubs had the right to make their pub smoke free or to make certain areas smoke free. They have had this right stolen from them. Pubs are private property. They are owned by private people. They are not state owned and it is wrong and deliberately misleading to call them "public". Many pubs went smoke free long before the law came in. They didn't need the law to enable them to do so.
That is one reason the law is wrong. Here is another. I believe I have the right to be fully responsible for my own life and my own health. I also believe this is not just my right but is also my obligation. If I choose to enter or work in a place that might be hazardous to me it is my right to make that choice and I do not want it taken away from me. It is my right and my obligation to do so. It is also everyone else's right and obligation.
Those are the reasons in a nutshell why the law is wrong. But this wouldn't be complete without taking a look at the justification the government used to supposedly win us all over. Second hand smoke and the dangers that have been claimed for it. If you have been even slightly convinced by these claims you owe it to yourself to make sure you haven't been conned.
I started my own investigation into the claims about the harmful effects of smoking and second hand smoke eight years ago. My first port of call was the ASH website. Why there? Well they shout the loudest about how bad it all is and they are constantly quoted by the media with their demands for the government to do something about it. I was a bit taken in by them and thought I should start with them as they said that anyone who said they were wrong was in the pay of "Big Tobacco". It amuses me how they still go on about "Big Tobacco". There is hardly anything left of the tobacco industry in this country. And what there is no longer has the right to communicate in any realistic way any more. In what way are they still "Big"?
So I went to the ASH website. I had heard all the claims about how smoking caused lung cancer and heart disease and yellow ears (I kid you not) and just about every other bad condition you can think of. I was smart enough to know that these were claims and were not research. Claims are supposed to be based on actual real research. So I wanted to study the research the claims were based on to see if I could find out if the claims were justified. It wasn't easy finding actual research. We are constantly told by ASH and their ilk that "the evidence is overwhelming". What I found was that the claims were overwhelming but the actual evidence was very hard to come by. When I eventually did find some I had to learn how to make sense of it.
I am not going to tell the whole story of all my research here. Do your own. I will just point out one obvious tactic and give you a couple of links to websites that are easy to understand and explain the research in much greater detail.
If you buy a single lottery ticket then you have one chance of winning the lottery. If you buy two tickets then you are twice as likely to win as someone who only buys one. If you buy 10 tickets you are ten times more likely to win the lottery. Now the most important question, how likely are you to win? You cannot answer that question because you don't have enough information. Something has been left out and because of that you cannot judge. The missing information is how many lottery tickets have been sold. If there are 20 million tickets and you have one ticket then your chances of winning are 1 in 20 million. If you have 10 tickets the odds are 10 in 20 million. Now you have the full information you can make a sensible choice as to how many lottery tickets to buy, if any.
Where "research" is done to influence governments this same technique of not revealing all the data is standard practice. Because of that we cannot judge how risky smoking might be. We are told that a smoker has 10 or 20 or 30 times more risk of getting something bad than non smokers. So as a smoker you may be 20 times more likely but how likely is that? With the lottery tickets you had 20 chances out of 20 million. That extra information allows you to decide what to do. With a risk of something nasty that is 3 times more likely than a non smoker but still only amounts to 3 out of 100,000 you may decide that the risk is worth taking. If ASH and their ilk were as honest and above reproach as they claim to be why don't they give you all the information whenever they make a claim?
And since we are on the subject of ASH I will pose just one more question. You can look this up on the internet on an official government site called Hansard. ASH have been funded with taxpayer money for years. Why would the government do that? ASH claims to be a charity and also claim to have widespread support. All they do is campaign for tougher laws on smokers. So why does the government fund them?
Here is a theory. The government wants to ban smoking. They fund ASH to create a lot of noise in the media and to bring other supposedly respectable organisations on board to make it look like there are terrible dangers from SHS and that there is widespread support for a total ban. The government announces it is to debate what to do about smoking. ASH campaigns harder and are thought to have nothing to do with the government. MPs are interviewed on the BBC and the tough reporter says "ASH and the British Heart Foundation and all these other completely trustworthy people say you aren't going far enough. What are you going to do about it?" And then the government "caves in" to popular demand and creates a ban on smoking. It couldn't happen here. Could it?
For information about tobacco research see www.forces.org/ and www.davehitt.com/facts/index.html
Comments
1. Tim said...
I do not smoke myself, but I believe in freedom of choice and also the right of a landlord to determine the type of service he wants to provide.
The ‘Pub Experience’ is basically this. You buy a pint and sit down and drink it. If you don’t like pub or the environment, then you leave. You don’t start forcing the pub via legislation to restrict an individual’s freedom, and to interfere with the traditional, relaxed atmosphere of pub life.
I don’t at all like the excessive noise levels (and loutish behaviour) surrounding trendy wine bar establishments – so I just don’t go in those places. Those places are full of embarrassing, loud people who binge drink. Such people are much more of a threat to themselves (and others) than people who quietly smoke and drink in a traditional pub.
The point is, it should be up to the landlord (i.e. the manager of that business) to decide if he allows smoking, and the extent to which he will allow smoking.
The smoking ban will cost huge amounts, in terms of promoting the ban, paying for ‘smoking cessation’ officer’s salaries, loss of employment as pubs close, and loss of tax revenue. The ban is typical of the interfering, kill-joy, nanny-state that will no doubt eventually ban alcohol from pubs.
3. Jenny said...
There is an awful lot wrong with this draconian ban. A couple of nights ago, I had a drink outside my local on a bench at a table, it rained (of course, lovely summer weather we're having) and we moved indoors. An elderly guy (86 or so) was in with his son and I chatted to them and told them I believed things had changed a lot. I told them I believed that people do not feel relaxed any more inside pubs. The elderly guy agreed with me and told me that he sensed an air of tension now in his local after all these years and had never felt it before. This ban is already ruining the lovely relaxing peaceful atmosphere of places.
4. Andrew said...
That was one of the better anti-ban articles I've read. However, your argument against the ban would appear to be the standard "landlord's rights" argument, and although in principle that's a sound argument, I've never seen it properly expressed (including here). Because the point that's always missed is that there are two classes of activity: there's things like drinking and singing and wearing trousers, that the landlord can choose to allow or not, and there's things like stabbing, and copying commercial DVDs, and setting off nuclear devices, which are rightly illegal regardless of the landlord's whimsy.
For the "landlord's rights" argument to work, you must convince the reader that smoking belongs in the first category. This is not something you can assume.
Presumably, the bulk of your readers will share your views and assume it anyway, but presumably you'd like to convince other people as well (unless, I suppose, your aim is just self-congratulation) and that will require the full argument.
If we exclude anarchists for the time being, nobody really doubts that landlords have the right to define rules for their own property, but nobody really doubts that there is a line to be drawn. The argument hinges on which side of that line the low-grade toxins in cigarette smoke belong, and you didn't even attempt to address that.
5. James W said...
if your comment about the lottery is based around how the national lottery works, it is flawed. the more people that play it, the greater chance that more than 1 person will win, but your chances of winning remain at somewhere around 13,000,000 to 1 ;)
anyway, smoking ban.. im cool with it. i see your objections however, privately owned places should be able to choose what rules they enforce? but i guess that dosnt apply in many cases anyway. you cant kill someone who tresspasses on your land, any more than you can in a public place, for example.
I dont know what research there is to support second hand smoke effects, but its definitely unpleasent, and I'd rather not have to suffer cos someone else is addicted to something. gawd, if sex was allowed in public that could get quite disgusting (though more mental harm than physical harm done). people arent allowed to do a lot of things that harm others to various degrees (from all out stabbings to excess noise), so why should smoking be any different?
6. Andrew said...
In fairness, his analogy works; it's his description of it that's flawed. Assuming you're not stupid enough to play the same numbers on two tickets, anyway.
Has anyone else noticed the captcha here returns false negatives? It's told me I did it wrong twice now.
7. Andrew said...
Actually, while I'm here, why would the government want to ban smoking if it's not a health hazard and it's so very profitable in terms of taxes?
8. Wendy said...
Andrew - they are not actually banning smoking in fact they are actively encouraging people to smoke at home. They are working with the tobacco companies to effectively ensure that there is no future litigation claims re passive smoking - now the ban is in place they will be quite happy to continue to collect the taxes.
9. Karen+B said...
I enjoyed your article, but I’m inclined to agree with Wendy: why would any Government want to forego a massive £12 - £14 billion annual windfall?
The problem is that ASH, whether a tool of the government or not, has become a runaway train. A case of the tail wagging the dog, if what you claim is correct. Unfortunately, they’re winning the war on passive smoking. On a daily basis, we are forced to endure a constant barrage of nicotine replacement product advertising, chirpy news items about happy, thriving, smoke-free pubs and kindly ‘doctors’ telling us the best ways to give up because, as everyone knows, ‘4 out of 5 smokers want to give up.’ In amongst all this, the phrase ‘second-hand smoke’ and all phrases pertaining are now commonplace and accepted as fact.
There’s a whole mass of people out there who believe they will catch a heart attack by breathing in a pub. Sooner or later, these people will demand that the Government removes all danger of risk by prohibiting smoking altogether, and no government would risk portraying itself as uncaring of the Nation’s Health.
There are members of the medical profession who advocate the forced prohibition of smoking for patients in psychiatric wards, many of whom are not there by choice in the first place. Presumably, these ‘guardians of our health’ wouldn’t have a problem with legislating the rest of the population into kicking the filthy habit – for our own good, of course. These people will be given a voice, and a ready audience to speak out for..
The answer must lie with that other mass of people – the ones who actually aren’t that bothered by a bit of fag smoke. Some of them are sincerely alarmed by this gradual chipping away of personal freedoms and others, like my ex-smoking husband, actually enjoy a bit of passive smoking and bemoan the lack of ‘atmosphere’ now prevalent in our pubs.
What we need is some ‘passive’ reisitance!
10. Smoker Margate said...
Good piece although you're mistaken about pubs being "private". They're public house which gives the public a wide range of rights within those privately owned premises. Semantics maybe, but a vital point
11. Bernie said...
Karen; Love that "passive resistance".
You asked why would the government forgo the taxes on tobacco products. Good question and one I used to wonder about myself. But I don't wonder about it any more. We have a PM who, as chancellor, has managed to steal an awful lot of money from many different groups including pensioners. What's another £12 billion? It isn't as if they have to devise ways of getting us to hand it over willingly.
To those who argued that public houses are not private property in some way; I am not arguing from a legal standpoint but a moral one.
12. Karen+B said...
Has anyone else noticed an absence of No Smoking signs on telephone boxes?
Does this mean we can smoke in them, or shall we make a nuisance of ourselves by insisting the authorities issue lots and lots of warnings to BT? 1 for each offence, isn't it?
Sorry this is a bit irrelevant, but there's bugger all happening anywhere else
13. Jenny said...
Some interesting points above. Now that we are 50 days or so into the ban there are a lot of issues emerging which many people didn't expect. People complaining in beer gardens in good weather because of smokers congregating there, more litter, more noise, shopping precincts with people smoking because they can't go into cafes and smoke. I'm fed up of seeing red and white stickers plastered everywhere (on shop doors and walls) to remind us of this new legislation and the ones inside the tap room of my local pub really really annoy me as that room is now almost always very sparcely populated whereas it was a happy thriving room prior to July 1st. Bus shelters too (I never use phone boxes and had not noticed the absence of stickers there). After 50 days or so, I have noticed and received many many reports of great loss of trade in many local pubs. Of course, there is also the loss of a centuries-old tradition. I think there is a lot wrong with this draconian ban and as time passes, more problems will emerge. A lot of non-smokers are of the same opinion because now a lot of their friends just aren't meeting them in the pub any more and places lack atmosphere, especially when the bad weather encourages people to stay at home. I do think non-smoking rooms and some non-smoking venues are necessary, but a blanket ban is proving to be not only unnecessary, but also a very very bad idea.
14. Andrew said...
I would have thought that as time passed we'd see FEWER problems. At present we're seeing the really dependant addicts leaving. But as time goes on, people who previously didn't go into pubs, particularly families, will start to arrive to replace them.
Did you decry the loss of a centuries-old tradition when people stopped using leeches to treat all ailments?
15. Jenny said...
Most pubs have not experienced a great influx of new pro-ban customers - we shall wait and see (as Herbert Henry Asquith once said. However, Andrew, I don't decry the loss of using leeches, but I decry the loss of freedom of expression, freedom of choice, the rise in gun and knife crimes, the increase in violence, unemployment rising and immigration being unfettered (just to name a few problems) - but now that dependant addicts like me have been expelled from pubs, everything in the country will be fine and utopia achieved?!! I think not.
16. Andrew said...
Hold up, what? Now you're opposed to any measure that won't instantly make the world perfect?
Oh, and I checked: phone boxes are exempt from the ban so BT needn't be hassled.
17. Jenny said...
The main point I meant to make was that there is all this fuss about people smoking tobacco when other issues are far more serious. It's easy to catch someone smoking tobacco, but far less easy to confront someone wielding a knife or a gun (and these problems seem to be on the increase recently). I hope, Andrew, you and others sharing your opinions start to enjoy the smoke-free public houses because in my area they are emptying rapidly (particularly after 9.30pm) and some pubs are starting to close early on certain nights. Like many others, I am not saying that every venue should be a smoking one - not at all - but there should still be some places around where people can smoke. (merely a choice). Nothing can make the world or people perfect - simply because it isn't and we aren't.
18. Andrew said...
That is all true, certainly, but I'm always wary of "there are bigger problems" arguments because at any one time there's always one Biggest Problem and if we only tried to solve that then nothing would ever get done. I'm not sure I accept that a mix of smoking and non-smoking places is ideal, either (although it's so hopelessly impractical it hardly matters in real life). It's too hard to justify from an employee's perspective, and it seems to be based on an assumption that all friendship groups are either all-smokers or all-nonsmokers. Most friendship groups are a mixture and a lot of smokers would, I think, point blank refuse to go to a non-smoking bar if an alternative exists. So who'd go to the non-smoking ones?
Of course, that seems to be happening already, but hopefully smokers will soon cave in and start going out again -- they can't possibly prefer smoking to socialising... can they? If they do then that's tragic and I'm not at all sure I want to spend any time with that kind of person anyway. If they stay home all day every day then that suits me fine.
19. Jenny said...
I think you will be well suited, Andrew, because in my area pubs are emptying and people do seem to be staying away.
20. Jenny said...
In fact, it's now September and one pub is closing down completely and I have heard reports about five others in the town which are struggling. Some are losing 400 pounds per week in spite of the tourism in this area during summer. Once tourism declines and families/people don't call in for as much pub food, other places will go into decline because drinks sales have been down in a lot of places. Friendship groups are already breaking up because people go and don't find the people there who they used to like to have a good laugh with. I hope other people come forward to comment on how this ban has changed the social life in pubs.
21. Michelle Gervais said...
Do smokers prefer smoking to socializing? Why would you think we have to choose between one or the other. In Canada, the profits of the Liquor Control Board has increased by 333 million dollars since the smoking bans started. Smokers have learned that entertaining at home is not only cheaper but is also more intimate and more relaxing. That 333 million in liquor control board sales translates to a loss of over a billion dollars in sales to the hospitality industry - and more than covers the increased taxes on cigarettes!
22. Bob said...
Smoking restrictions were imposed in Spain. However, there, it was only required that bars, cafes, etc post a notice stating that smoking was or was not allowed on the premises. How sad that country so recently out of fascism should give a lesson in democracy to this country. But oh so right.
2. Gaston Hidalgo said...
I agree fully with Tim and find that Bernie's article asks all the right questions. I should think that any person who can think for themselves, that is without the help of "opinion" can come to the same conclusions; the ban on smoking is a sign of much worse to come. Political action will be required by ordinary folk to stop it.
16/07/2007