Imagine having emphysema. For those who don’t know what that entails, emphysema is when the lining of your lungs is destroyed, meaning that it gradually becomes harder and harder to take in the oxygen your body needs. To start with, you notice that you get out of breath just a bit faster than you used to. Then, over time, it gets worse. And worse. After a while you find yourself fighting for breath even while sitting still. And then, after a few years – for most of which you’ll be constantly hooked up to oxygen tanks, barely able to speak, move or even feed yourself – you’ll most likely die, either from a simple lack of air or from heart failure as the low oxygen levels in your blood cause your veins and arteries to constrict and your blood pressure to skyrocket. There is no cure. Oh, and if you smoke regularly for many years, the odds of this happening to you get a lot shorter (12 to 13 times shorter, in fact – although technically that’s for COPD rather than just emphysema).

None of this is really news – most people who smoke are aware that their habit is likely to have some nasty health consequences as they get older – and plenty of them would probably argue that the reason they smoke is that the pleasure they get from doing so outweighs the negative health effects. But this ignores the rather glaring issue that tobacco is an addictive substance, so the enjoyment of smoking for most people lies in large part in the relief from your addictive craving (though I’m not denying that smoking is enjoyable in itself as well). And it’s for that very simple reason that I support the announcement today that displaying tobacco in shops is to be banned.

The libertarian argument often used in cases like this – that people should be free to do things which put their own health at risk if they want to – is a compelling one, especially if those activities bring in more to the Treasury than is spent by the government tackling any associated health issues, as is commonly claimed to be the case with smoking. But autonomy shouldn’t be the only consideration when you’re thinking about addictive behaviour, for the fairly obvious reason that people who are acting under the influence of an addiction aren’t acting completely autonomously, which probably goes a long way in explaining why people still smoke despite the fairly high likelihood of severe health problems in the future. If you’re addicted to tobacco and want to quit (as the government claims one in three smokers are) then not seeing cigarettes displayed every time you go to the shop could well make it that bit easier. It’s easy to mock the idea that displays in shops affect your retail habits, but you know what? The reason that shops put up displays – and have been doing so for decades, if not centuries – is because they make you more likely to buy things. Of course they’re not the only thing determining what you buy (and the government’s claim that they’re the main reason teenagers start smoking does admittedly seem pretty implausible) but it’s ridiculous to claim they have no effect at all. And when those things are products you’re addicted to, that’s doubly true.

In any case, getting rid of shop window displays doesn’t do anything to restrict the sale of tobacco, just the advertisement of it. This ban does next to nothing to limit the freedom of smokers to buy and consume what they want, and there’s a good chance it will help the large numbers of people struggling to overcome their addictions. I really don’t see a problem with it.

The anti-smoking ban campaign group, Save our Pubs and Clubs are holding a competition to find the pub with the best smoking area. I can think of a few, but the ones I like best are, I believe, a little in breach of the law so perhaps, in their interests I will hold my peace.

Pubs that have managed to carry on creating a hospitable environment for smokers are, in a certain sense, accomodating to the ban, but they are also resisting it. This is because the ban was not really about passive smoking but, rather about making smoking a more uncomfortable experience so as to push people into stopping.

One thing you will find these days is that politicians of all stripes will profess their desire to support pubs. Doing so is good politics. It’s a nod to British tradition, and to (understandable) nostalgia for a more communitarian epoch. But we are entitled to ask what kinds of pubs they wish to support. Judged by their policy, the political class seem to approve of pubs only insofar as they don’t let anyone smoke, don’t get too noisy and don’t encourage too much drinking. In other words, pubs transmogrified into beer serving starbucks outlets are what they are willing to support. And this is hardly the kind of environnent that will induce people to pay a premium over the prices in ASDA – and so its no surprise that for all the verbal publoving from our politicians, the industry is still in decline. If we want to save our pubs and clubs then we cannot simulltaneously dragoon them into being part of the public health set up.

To contact Reuben email reuben@thethirdestate.net

Last Friday I enjoyed a drink with some friends at the Southampton Arms. Upon arrival we had immediately headed outside, partly because the pub was extremely crowded, and partly because, like many other people, we still enjoy a drink amd a smoke. Suddenly just as the clock struck 10 several staff appeared in the beer garden and very quickly ushered everybody inside – since 10 pm was when the beer garden had to close. Nowadays this is a very common part of the pub going experience. Usually a few people living near a pub will complain about the noise, and the council will respond by imposing what often seem to be OTT restrictions as part of the pub’s licence.

Of course, nobody would suggest that pubs be given free reign, and that the feelings of residents be given no weight. Yet, considering that pub-going is such an important and popular part of our communal culture, there needs to be some give and take (indeed the smoking drinker who is inconvenienced most by such restrictions has been forced to do rather a lot pf giving of late). The question on my mind last week was why somebody would live next to a pub if they wanted quiet by 10pm on a Friday. Granted, people are limited by their circumstances, but the pub is question was on Highgate Road in Gospel Oak, right near the Heath. In other words, local residents probably enjoy the means to exercise quite a degree of autonomy about where they live. Indeed, pubs generally are concentrated in more central locations where housing is at a premium. Surely we can expect people to move into them on the understanding that they may be kept up a little past 10 on a Friday or Saturday.

It is in fact not only concerns about noise that govern pubs outdoor spaces, but also the contemporary moral panic about people DRINKING on The STREET. In Camden Town – hardly the place where one would expect a quiet life – almost all pubs appear compelled to operate a no drinks outside rule. When combined with a “no smoking inside” rule, this can be a pain. Yet as somebody who is not overly cautious I am generally willing to leave my drink inside and watch it through the window if need be. Yet some of my female friends are understandably far more cautious about having to leave their drink unattended if they want a smoke – for them it can be far more than a minor annoyance.

Women are arguably made more vulnerable by a system of no drinks outside, no smokes inside. Yet my focus here isn’t purely on the worst possible outcome of these rules. The point is that women already face pressure not to go out and throw caution to the wind in the way that men are easily able to. Many already find themselves starting the evening by planning how they will get home for reasons men don’t have to think about. As such our night culture should be designed to make it easy for women especially do to as they wish, regardless of the threats they may face. And the current rules, I am afraid, do the opposite

With pubs still closing at an alarming rate politicians of all stripes pay lip service to the idea of supporting our pub culture. Yet they refuse to ever give the interests of pubs and their customers any priority over other concerns – whether it is the desire amongst some for quiet by 10pm on a Friday, or the amorphous and extensive concept of public order, or, in the case of the blanket smoking ban, public health. If our pub culture is going to be saved and supported, then public houses must be given some more leeway to operate in the way that we, pub going public, want them to.

There is disquiet amongst the staff at Carstairs Hospital – a secure mental facility – over plans to ban inpatients from smoking anywhere, even outdoors.

Carstairs State Hospital houses a wide group of patients. As the tabloids like to remind us, it houses murderers and rapists. Yet also incarcerated within it’s gates are people who have been convicted of no crime. As its website states, patients can be sent there under the mental health act, and can be admitted from NHS hospitals as well as prisons and courts.

Locking up unconvicted individuals is, in itself, morally problematic. Yet most would accept that in very  extreme cases such measures might be justified to prevent those who are very mentally unwell  doing serious damage to themselves or others. It is, however, absolutely indefensible for liberties to be gratuitously taken away from mental patients. It is unacceptable to remove from mental patients those freedoms that enjoyed by ordinary citizens, when doing so cannot be justified on grounds of safety, security or treatment.

Front line Staff at the facility –  those who will actually be responsible for enforcing a cold turkey regime on the patients – are particularly anxious about the smoking ban.  One is quoted in the Daily Record as saying :

“It’s all very well for people who have little or no contact with patients to make decisions in a boardroom as they sip coffee and eat biscuits. But they are putting those of us on the frontline at greater risk of harm.”

I cannot imagine that many smokers would be surprised by these sentiments. If somebody locked me up and told me that I couldn’t have a cigarette for the forseeable future, I cannot imagine that my reaction would be particularly pacific.

But the fundamental issue here is one of civil liberties. Mental patients are citizens too. And at the very least, they ought to enjoy the dignity of making decisions about whether or not they smoke.

A collection has been set up by Old Holborn to help Hogan who is jail for non-payment of a huge fine. To donate click here.

Pub landlord Nick Hogan has been jailed  for 6 months over the smoking ban. Basically he was lumped with costs and fines totalling more than 10k after several breaches – including a mass smoke in on the day the ban came in. After declaring himself unable to meet the £500  month payments he has been jailed. As somebody who has stood up and paid the price he deserves the support of all of us who oppose the smoking ban (if you don’t oppose it yet read on). I am about to donate to the fund set up by old holborn  and suggest you do to. (yes he’s a righty but he’s correct on this!)

Anna Racoon explains more:

“Nick was actually jailed for non-payment of the fine originally imposed for a ‘mass smoke-in’ on the day the ban came into force in 2007 in his pub, the ‘Swan and Barristers’ in Bolton. He no longer has that pub. He was fined again when council inspectors walked into his present pub and discovered a group of customers smoking – Nick wasn’t even on the premises.

His wife, Denise, is now managing their present pub in Chorley  herself.  Their trade is so low that they don’t even bother to open the downstairs bar. Nick is bankrupt, and had gone to court intending to argue that he could not afford the £500 a month payments demanded by the council towards their £10,000 bill for prosecuting him. He has already paid off £1,600. The court gave him a six month sentence instead, and he is currently in Forest Bank prison in Pendlebury, unable to help to earn the money which would ensure his release.

Denise has not even been able to speak to him since he was sentenced. She has merely been told to phone the prison on Monday to enquire when she might see him. She is confused, frightened, and feeling very lonely.

Denise has just said to me ‘all the people who disagree with the ban – where are they now? – and my Nick is in prison’. Quite.

If all the people who disagree with the no-smoking ban contributed a few coppers, then Nick would be released. If you can’t afford £1, then at least drop Nick a line and let him know he is not forgotten – not surprisingly, he is feeling very depressed.

Denise has no idea how to use the Internet, she has no idea how many of us are against the no-smoking ban. Let’s show her.

£1 each – just 10,000 of you – let’s see if the blogosphere can do more than merely rant in unison. Once the amount received totals the outstanding fine, they have to release Nick.”

I have already expressed my opposition to the smoking ban here and here.  Quite simply thisis about pluralism, and the defence of civil society. Public houses are not public services. They are not town halls. They are places of entertainment which people choose, or choose not, to attend. They need not be acceptable or desirable places for everybody.  They are places where groups of men and women voluntarily associate for the purposes of leisure. As such  it is widely accepted that pubs and clubs may simply refuse you entry. They can simply say no, you’re not our kind of guy (or in my case “no you look like you are coming in to keep warm”). Yet if they say that you can come in, but only on condition that you accept certain rather minor risks (passive smoking) then, according to the government, your rights are being  trampled on. Bollocks.

One man has stood up for pluralism and choice in the social sphere and has been beaten with a very big stick for doing so. The least we could do is help him out.

Homage to Hogan and Other Smoking ban Heroes

Image: flickr/Valentin.Ottone

As you may or may not have noticed, smoking is an issue fairly close to the hearts of some among The Third Estate’s bloggers. And as today brings news of proposals for even stricter restrictions on smoking in public places, you could be forgiven for expecting another angry denunciation of government policy on the issue. But, just this once, that’s not what you’re going to get. Now, admittedly as a (near-)non-smoker, I’m probably a bit less likely to view the right to smoke as a fundamental human freedom in any case, but take a close look at what the Department of Health is actually suggesting:

This next push offers a radical vision for a smokefree future. It sets out several key commitments:

• Stopping young people being recruited as smokers by cracking down on cheap illicit cigarettes. Immediate investment in extra overseas officers will stop 200 million cigarettes entering the UK every year.
• Every smoker will be able to get help from the NHS to suit them if they want to give up – new types of support will be available at times and in places that suit smokers.
• The Government will carefully consider the case for plain packaging.
• Stopping the sale of tobacco from vending machines – a significant source of tobacco for young people.

So, let’s consider these proposals one by one. A crackdown on cigarette smuggling? More tax money for the Treasury’s all-too-empty coffers as more cigarettes are bought legitimately? Sounds OK to me. Some smokers – well, OK, most smokers who are aware of the issue – are undeniably quite pissed off that taxes on tobacco bring in considerably more money than the NHS spends on treating smoking-related diseases, but I don’t see that they have much reason to complain, particularly if they argue against restrictions on smoking on the grounds of personal liberty (as is commonplace on this blog). No one’s coercing smokers into buying tobacco products, so raising taxes on them isn’t authoritarian. Sure, most smokers are to some extent addicted (so perhaps they can’t exactly be said to be choosing to buy tobacco), but if they want to spend less money then they have the option of free smoking cessation help from the NHS – help which, according to the second bullet point above, is becoming better-funded and more widely available under the new proposals. There’s no compulsion involved.

Banning branded packaging – if indeed the government decides to do this – doesn’t seem much of an affront to liberty either. I fail to see how distinctive designs on different brands of tobacco products enhance the freedoms of those who are buying those products and as such likewise fail to see how banning said designs restricts their freedom. It certainly restricts the freedoms of the tobacco companies to influence consumers through marketing and branding, but surprisingly enough I don’t really give a shit about that.

Stopping the sale of tobacco from vending machines is, again, not something I can really bring myself to care about. Unless you think the UK’s ban on alcohol in vending machines is a gross violation of our fundamental liberties (or that there’s some fundamental difference in how alcohol and tobacco should be treated as controlled substances), I really don’t see that there’s a great deal to make a fuss about.

As for the final point, there seems little reason why a campaign to dissuade people from exposing children to secondhand smoke should be seen as controversial, and a prohibition on smoking in the entrances to buildings is barely an extension of the previous smoking ban. The principle – that non-smokers shouldn’t be exposed to high levels of secondhand smoke – is exactly the same. Walking through a large group of smokers clustered round a doorway is pretty comparable to walking past a group of smokers indoors, and obviously unavoidable if you want to go into the building outside which said smokers are standing. Whether the previous smoking ban was right or wrong is a question on which I’m agnostic, but this is hardly a tougher restriction.

In short, smokers’ rights advocates might do well to rein in their outrage. Whether the government is right to care so much about the harms of smoking is certainly debatable, but if it is trivial then attacking these proposals as part of a war on personal liberty seems a little lacking in perspective.

With 40 pubs shutting down every week, the continued news of pub closures fills 99% of me with sadness, and 1% of me with an almost unbearable smugness. I am sad not simply because I enjoy going to the pub, but because as I explained in a previous post, pubs are a social and communal good. In our crowded cities, north European climate, and inhospitable and over-regulated streets, pubs represent a crucial source of public space. Why a tiny part of me is unbearably smug will become clear.

When the idea of a smoking ban was first broached I had yet to become addicted to the fine pleasure of tobacco, but nonetheless I was opposed to its implementation on grounds of civil liberties. Yet – as is becoming increasingly clear – I could just as easily have opposed it on the grounds of self-interest. Whenever the ban was discussed many people asserted  their right to go to the pub of their choice without sitting in a smokey environment if they do not wish.  In this post-fordist age, consumption is – more than ever – constructed as an individual act. People are no longer content with a black model-T. They want a car that is just right for them.  By the same token if people go to the pub it is their right not to have their experience contaminated by somebody else’s unwanted habits.

Yet the thing is that going to the pub is, by its nature, an enormously collective form of consumption. Here in London you will pay about three times as much in the pub for your beer as you would in a supermarket. Now there are various reasons for that, but one of them is that you are paying  – not unreasonably – to sit in a well maintained space smack-bang in the middle of where lots of cool shit is going on.  Now obviously  nobody could shoulder this burden alone. Instead pubs rely on lots of people effectively paying for that collective space to be maintained. Whether you like it or not, when you choose to enjoy a pub you are enterring into a relationship with other people using it.

And when you enter into a relationship with people you have to compromise. You might have to listen to loud music which you do not like but other people do. By the same time you cannot expect the environment to be smokeless just because you feel like drinking in pub x and want to drink in pub x without encountering any smoke. Non-smokers , concieving of their pub outings to be purely individual forms of consumption felt justified in relying on the law to ensure that their pub outings were exactly as they wished. Perhaps when their local shuts down – and pub-shutdowns increased by approximately 100% after the smoking ban – they will be pushed to conceive of pubs and pub-drinking differently.

Stats recently published in the Telegraph show that the number of pubs in Britain has declined by more than 10 per cent in the past decade. By the end of the year, it is forecasted that there will be just 52,000 pubs in the UK compared with 61,000 a decade ago.

So why should we be worried? The answer has nothing to do with that sentimental bollocks about protecting traditional english culture. Nor is it about maintaining an abundance of places to get hammered. Rather it is because pubs represent one of the most important sources of public space for communities throughout this country.

An obvious point I might begin by making is that Britain – notwithstanding the current weather – is a cold and wet country. People need and want places outside the home where they can meet and converse, and by and large they want those places to be sheltered from the elements. In this sense pubs -as places where you can simply meet, relax and speak in the company of others – are an almost unique resource. Unlike London restraunts, you don’t have to pay silly money for the luxury of sitting there until your table is very assertively cleared. If you so wish, a 3 quid pint will get you through to closing time.

But the role of pubs – communal and cultural – is so much greater than this. Where do you think music comes from? Believe it or not, not many rockstars begin by playing at the 02. Day in day out, the backrooms or basements rooms of our public houses will be hosting open mic nights and smaller gigs. There will be niche audiences listening to the kind of music that doesnt get airplay on mtv. There will be comedy. There will be activists like us, who need a warm, cheap and convenient place for their public meetings.

In a privatised but squashed together metropolis like london, we get a great deal simply from pubs existing. They are good for us individuals and they are good for our culture. But as a society we do not show them a lot of love. Notwithstanding the very partial relaxation of Britain’s absurd liscensing laws, the Labour government’s policy over the past decade has basically been anti-pub. The ban on smoking combined with repeated above-inflation increases in the beer tax have made it increasingly difficult for pubs to survive, and to continue providing these crucial communal spaces. It is my opinion that the government does not simply need to moderate its policy. Instead what we need is an about turn. Instead of seeing pubs primarily in terms of the social ills with which they are (dubiously) associated, public policy should be premised on the idea that pubs are a social and cultural good. Policy makers should be concerned with ensuring that pubs survive and flourish.