no smore smoking in english pubs then? NO to cigarettes; YES to war
October 9, 2005 – 2:10 pmwell its finally happened. so london will therefore have to go the way New York and Dublin did. it will be interesting to see how things pan out. will people just in these “smoking -room carriages” - or will they just stand in the street>? will they find equivalents of the brass monkey in LA which is one of the places you can smoke. Will there be a public backlash? rioting in the streets..?
apparently its to do with trying to decrease the “waste of life” . fine, then why don’t they ban arms or something like that then? you can’t really tell us that ministers are so concerned about the waste of life that they ban smoking in pubs; they can’t be too concerned about waste of life otherwise why would they go around encouraging wars? someone ought to really point this out to them.
in any case, yes banning smoking in pubs helps a certain type of people - the ones who smoke ’socially’. the hard-core smokers aren’t going to stop cos they can’t do it in the pub. they might drink less - so hey! maybe the government will get what it appears to want
5 Responses to “no smore smoking in english pubs then? NO to cigarettes; YES to war”
There are lots of things we do in life is very harmful to us but knowingly or unknowingly we carry on doing it until it is too late or impossible to stop. I am sure that many of us know that smoking is harmful to us but we carry on doing it because become we are addicted to it or don’t want to stop because we enjoy smoking it. In my case I can stop smoking if I want to but the only time I smoke when I have couple of beers and I really enjoy it. I can go for days without having any craving for cigarettes but I always enjoyed having couple of smokes when I take alcohol. What’s wrong with that. We don’t live for ever. We may as well enjoy it what ever make us happy. Everything in moderation is ok. First of tell those people who drives around gas guzzling vehicle to stop polluting our environment.
By Pacers on Oct 14, 2005
Not to worry.
The issue here is secondary inhalation, not smoking itself.
Even when smoking is banned in bars, the coke snorting will go on in the toilets as normal.
By Ibn-Battuta on Oct 18, 2005
of course it will go on. and smoking will go on as well. and if the issue was only about secondary inhalation they could allow bars where you only apply to work behind the bar if you are a smoker - and you only go there if you are a smoker. surely we can socially regulate ourselves like that. no one is asking a non-smoker to go into a smoking bar. so its an extension of the smoking section - if you like. i agree people ought to respect rights of non-smokers, and i think the same applies vice versa. we should be able to have our own pubs where we can smoke, and if we clearly label it, the non-smokers can’t complain - can they? of course they will we know it.
By sonia on Oct 18, 2005
“they could allow bars where… you only go there if you are a smoker.”
Ah. Yes. That would be eminently democratic and sensible.
But I think the government is scared that those bars would get the vast majority of the business.
What the government is unwilling to acknowledge is that instituting a blanket ban on smoking is fundamentally undemocratic. It may well be that only 23% of the population smokes. But what percentage of the public who regularly go to pubs and bars smoke occasionally or often? A hell of a lot more than a quarter, i would think… quite possibly more than three quarters.
There’s no law preventing people from establishing pubs and bars where smoking is banned, right now. In fact, Wetherspoons has done it.
When it’s more profitable to run a non-smoking bar than a bar which allows smoking, smoking bans will appear of their own accord. So what’s the point in trying to confine smokers to their own homes?
Are we really going to have a future where people have to go to semi-illegal “speakeasies” in order to enjoy smoking in public with other smoking friends?
By Ibn-Battuta on Oct 18, 2005
looks like it. actually people will have to step outside in the cold. in LA its fine as its fairly warm outside. you tend to find certain venues like jazz and blues cafes completely empty as the clientele is all outside!
By sonia on Oct 19, 2005