Reasons not to vote Labour #10 - the way they implemented the anti-smoking legislation
Posted by Christie Malry on May 3, 2010 at 4:16 pm
I don't like smoking. Having a keen sense of smell, I don't really like smokers either. Freedom cannot be an absolute concept; it is necessarily a balance of the rights of an individual against the rights of his/her peers.
The current smoking ban has improved air quality in many work places. But in most instances, it was already improving. When I started work, all offices permitted smoking, usually at employees' desks. Without being forced to, employers started to restrict smoking in the workplace - first to a dedicated smoking room, then increasingly to outside the building. A new equilibrium was asserting itself.
Even in places where smoking was still common, it was changing, albeit slowly. More restaurants were banning smoking throughout, to make the experience more pleasant for their diners. And a number of non-smoking pubs were opening.
The government's ban meant that many pubs, faced with a drop in business, had to close. In particular, working mens' clubs - a cornerstone of working class (i.e. Labour) Britain - were hit hard. All because some latte-sipping twenty-something posh Londoners wanted to draft the law a certain way.
It also led to some curious outcomes. It was now illegal to smoke in a pub. But legal to smoke in a children's playground. Or at a sports stadium (many voluntarily banned smoking... see, government isn't needed!). And cigarette butts started to pile up outside pubs...
Bizarrely, Labour managed to irritate both smokers and non-smokers. Smokers, mostly understand the ban but would like to smoke in pubs that decide to opt in. Non-smokers complain about the bits of the ban that were badly drafted, and the mess outside pubs, and the fact that people tend to smoke in doorways and near open windows. And they couldn't care less about opt-in smoking pubs.
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