Thank you for not smoking
Posted by Christie Malry on March 10, 2010 at 6:15 am
Today is No Smoking Day in the UK.
As campaigns go, it's really fairly ineffectual. Smokers still smoke. Back in the days when smoking was allowed in more places, smokers would still smoke in them. It would be easy to conclude that it's a total failure.
Yet times have changed. When I was growing up, cinemas used to be split into smoking and non-smoking sections. The left wing of the theatre was smoking and the rest non-smoking.
Similarly, buses used to permit smoking. In fact, I remember the back half and all the top floor of double decker buses were smoking, with only a few seats at the front being non-smoking. Eventually they banned smoking on the whole of the lower floor.
Smoking used to be permitted on the Underground too, until the terrible fire at King's Cross made a complete system-wide ban irresistible.
These days, we look at the very idea that we might have tolerated smoking in restaurants with a sort of curiosity. It's ridiculous. Ridiculous too that we ever tolerated smoking on trains, or even that smoking was permitted, unrestricted, on railway platforms.
The political will reflected a change in public mood over time. Smokers collectively did not act in a responsible way. While in the majority, they could just about get away with it, but as smoking rates have dwindled, the majority have started to enforce their rights. Personally, I think the ban in pubs is the wrong way to go about it, but there is still scope for further restrictions.
I don't think No Smoking Day can claim the credit for it, but times continue to change. What do we tolerate from smokers today that will look ludicrous in the future? Throwing butts on the floor? Smoking in parks? Smoking in cars with children? Smoking outside? Who knows... but anyway, thank you for not smoking.
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