Impact of smoking ban on clubs

[nomadologist]

What does that tell us? That this fundamentally myopic, anti-social ban has nothing to do with 'concern' for the collective health [medical, social, economic] of the wider society, but everything to do with power and ideology.

Yeah, like I already said upthread about three or four times...

 

[nomadologist]

shudder to think huh? but even scarier that i honestly don't think it's that far off. can't you see a generic and non descript Nu-Metal and Half-Step cross-breed taking over the linkin Park/ Limp Bizkit contingency in a few years?

when burial said in that interview how some track he likes "stares out at you with cold, soul-less shark eyes"... i don't think he fully comprehends the vision of what he's talking about. it is antithesis to what makes his music good. i think he, and people like him, will be be completely disillusioned when this ideal actually takes over, and millions of people like this:

start bumping the afore mentioned nu-metal/dubstep from their jeeps.

where the fuck did you find this picture? hahahah

 

[Logan Sama]

I'm not getting lung cancer by the age of 35. I'm happy.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

No, not at all. i do not support state-sanctioned brutality on hard drug users, but I do think if you steal cars or beat people up/kill them to steal their ipods/money, you should get some kind of punishment.

And don't cry for junkies or drug dealers who need to go to jail. My friends used to make up bogus assault charges on other friends because a dimebag would go for $40 or $50 in holding. They'd call and drop the charges as soon as the drugs were all sold.

All of this is only showing your own ignorance about drug addiction and the law. The undercovers on South 3rd used to know me by name, they didn't give a fucking shit. It's only the brown ones who get in trouble

Is this incoherence helpful to anyone?

In one sentence you state that you "do not support state-sanctioned brutality on hard drug users," a sentiment that is quickly followed by a reversal in your next sentence, where you speak of "junkies or drug dealers who need to go to jail," ie the poor desperate ones who resort to stereotypical acting-out crime to fund their addiction, while the rich ones, whose own crimes are socially legitimated, get off scott free. Again, to repeat, do you 'need to go to jail"? What here excludes you from your own reasoning concerning the implicated ones? Because you're not so desperate as to rat on 'friends' [I'm always amazed how Americans routinely describe the remotest acquaintance, however reprehensible, even the most base-minimal, predatory 'business' connection, as a 'friend' ie as someone ultimately serving the anti-thesis of friendship, someone purely open to easy exploitation, with impunity], being white and middle-class?

I'm afraid, Nomad, all this isn't helping anyone to clear up their 'ignorance about drug addiction and the law'. Of course, its 'the brown ones who get in trouble', they being the ones invariably racially earmarked for "some kind of punishment" because they supposedly "steal cars or beat people up/kill them to steal their ipods/money," and so "need to go to jail." as you are seemingly arguing above. This enlightened ritual sure clears up a lot of all that ignorance ...

And then you conclude that because "the undercovers on South 3rd used to know me by name, they didn't give a fucking shit" that you are therefore disgusted by this, appalled by their indifference to your street status: 'How Dare They Not Arrest Me!'

 

[nomadologist]

Is your position helpful to anyone? I think it would be great if the government paid for addiction therapy for smokers instead of banning it, but I don't think it's *that* outrageous that they have banned it instead. I expect nothing more from the government--why should I? Why should I expect them to do the most genuinely helpful thing. They never have before with any other addictive substance.

Believe it or not, I do think people are still legally and ethically responsible for their actions even if they're drug addicts. I don't have any idea why you seem to think there is no gray area between punishing people for violent crimes (and people who genuinely deserve this) and simply throwing drug addicts in jail for buying the drugs they need, or why thinking that there are some drug addicts who have done things that would justifiably land them in jail is inconceivable coming from someone who can admit that there are gross abuses of the existing laws (and grossly abusive laws.) There are definitely people who are drug addicts who go too far and do violent things that I think deserve remuneration. It would be best if they received free drug rehabilitation instead, but are you going to offer to pay for it?

Though I sympathize with the people who are unjustly and counterproductively jailed, and I try to vote for those who will try to change the policies that foster this, I also sympathize with citizens who don't want people who are repeat violent felony offenders to be left on the streets with no attempt made to protect others from them. Believe it or not, there are some brown people (like there are plenty of whites) who are in jail because they have actually done reprehensible things.

Sure, I've done bad things, I should've gone to jail for multiple felony counts of possession with intent. I could've been put away several times over. I have no problem with the idea that I was ethically responsible for my actions and should have paid my debt to society. I don't know many junkies or ex-junkies who would have any problem owning up to their legal culpability.

 

[nomadologist]

And I know a big part of the reason why I've never been arrested--because they know a white person isn't even worth drawing up the paper work on possession charges for. Most white people can afford lawyers that get all charges dropped, and on the first offense, you'd be lucky to even get to arraignment with the charges. They'd probably just refer me to a methadone clinic while I'm still in the holding cell, ask what a girl with an education is doing in this shitty part of town, give me a lecture about not ruining my life before I'm even 30, and tell me that I need rehab or I'll be dead, or worse!, sucking dick for $10 a pop in no time.

 

[nomadologist]

Oh, but to qualify my statement about my own crimes, I have never committed a violent crime, I have never hurt anyone physically, I have never robbed anyone, I have never done anything that physically hurt anybody or involved guns or threatening people or anything like that. So I am not a violent criminal. I don't deserve to be jailed because I personally have been a physical threat to others, just to be clear on that. My crimes have been solely distribution on a scale of moderate means.

 

[Gavin]

Heh that's an interesting one, a Bataille type of sacrifice of the self (smoke oneself to death) in order to ritually counteract the imposed taboos of society. I think it's more likely that the Celts just hate authority so much that people took to smoking more just after the ban. I doubt it carried on, but would love to see the figures.

I'm not sure it explains crime, but it's a lovely idea that it would.

Yes, I was reading Bataille when this thought first occurred to me.

Also, I had these white trash neighbors across the street that would get into loud fights constantly... I could hear everything, hear them deliberately ratcheting up the tension with each other, always saying the most transgressive, offensive thing possible although sometimes there was a perceptible note of hesistance, as if they HAD to call the Hispanic guy walking by a "spic" even though they knew it was going to escalate the situation into a place they didn't want to go, even if they might have preferred the fight to end. I got the distinct impression they were compelled to be assholes by forces they didn't quite understand.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

AFAIK smoking has decreased in Ireland since the ban, but there are contradictory reports.

They are indeed contradictory, aren't they? Nevertheless, most reports [ including the 'contradictory' ones] I've seen actually confirm that smoking has increased since the ban (though smoking demographics have changed), as further evidenced by the improved sales of tobacco companies (and Ban did not hit sales of tobacco) and a hugh increase in tobacco smuggling, internet sales, and the black market (and Costs of Cigarette Smuggling), including the emergence of the Prohibition-style 'smokeasy'.

Let's consider this with the most basic example. You quote from Wikipedia:

One report stated that cigarette sales in Ireland and Scotland increased after a smoking ban.[44] In contrast, another report states that in Ireland, cigarette sales fell by 16 per cent in the six months after the ban's introduction.[45]In the UK as a whole, cigarette sales fell by 11% during July 2007, the first month of the smoking ban in England, compared with July 2006.[46]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking...ans_by_country

This is a brilliant instance of selective reporting to confirm a pre-existing prejudice. The much heralded decline in tobacco sales in the 6 months after the ban of 16% was subsequently rapidly reversed, and sales in the following 6 months increased by 14%, a trend since continuing and in spite of large price increases are now above their pre-ban level. What's even more startling about the above false reporting is that, not only is this misleadingly selective data repeated in the source cited , but even the leading anti-smoking lobbying group, ASH, fully acknowledges the reversal from the initial, expected short-term decline.

Furthermore, when allowance is made for the fact that in the majority of countries in the West the rate of smoking has been in continuous decline anyway for many decades (from over half the population down to less than one quarter in many cases), a gradual reversal of this trend following the introduction of smoking bans in many countries should be a cause for some concern rather than grounds for a further display of bigoted and histrionic theatrics, wishful thinking, and commonsensical rhetoric. It also emerges that the increase in the rate of smoking is principally among the young (ie new smokers (the increased attractiveness of smoking possibly being accentuated by the very existence of a blanket ban), while for older, existing smokers the rate continues its normal long-term decline.

Maureen Moore, the chief executive of Ash Scotland — the anti-smoking lobby group — called on the Scottish executive to find new ways to cut smoking levels. More than 25% of the adult population — one million people — in Scotland smoke.

“Any increase in sales of cigarettes is bad news for public health,” said Moore. “If cigarette sales are genuinely on the increase then the government needs to raise the price of tobacco further and consider new ways in which to target smokers with better smoking cessation choices.”

There's a paranoic desperation here: by disavowedly ('If cigarette sales are genuinely on the increase ...") acknowledging the failure of the ban to actually reduce the incidence of smoking, especially in younger age groups, the response is one of denial and displacement combined with an immediate call for even more repressive measures. Maybe if all else fails they might like to smoke 'em out ...

[Meanwhile, the tobacco companies are delighted by all of this, with their worldwide sales booming, and all responsibility for the health effects of smoking now conveniently atomized, now resting entirely with the individual smoker: "The litigation landscape continues to improve, particularly in the US, where the vast majority of individual and class action claims have been decided in favor of the tobacco companies. We were pleased to see a case against Commonwealth Brands dismissed with no right of appeal in June 2007. And of the two remaining individual claims against Commonwealth, one has been dismissed, although could still theoretically be appealed, while the other is inactive and has been for some time."----Iain Napier - Chairman, Imperial Tobacco Group PLC ... the linked report above gives a good insight into the contemporary mindset of senior corporate executives, innocent upstanding Pillars of Society as their zombie customers are criminalized]

 

[john eden]

No. To repeat yet again, I said that the ban on smoking [as with harder drugs] has nothing to do with any consistent social policy for reducing the wider incidence of smoking,.

Indeed. It is about protecting workers from inhaling second hand smoke in the workplace. Which has been hugely successful - something like 95% compliance in the UK, iirc.

If smokers choose to respond to the ban by smoking more outside or in the privacy of their own homes, that is of course their choice.

 

[Transpontine]

. It also emerges that the increase in the rate of smoking is principally among the young (ie new smokers (the increased attractiveness of smoking possibly being accentuated by the very existence of a blanket ban), while for older, existing smokers the rate continues its normal long-term decline.

I agree with John (previous post) that the case for the smoking ban doesn't stand or fall on whether smoking declines, but on whether it creates a healthier workplace for bar staff - which it transparently does. I don't see any great conspiracy or even strategy behind the smoking ban, once the evidence was clear that second hand smoking increases the risk of cancer etc. the case was pretty unanswerable and would no doubt have ended up being gradually enforced through court action by ex-bar staff with serious illnesses. Its pretty straightforward in that respect - I don't know of any other workplace in the UK where health and safety regulations would allow routinely filling the air with a toxic substance.

The increase in smoking amongst young people is worrying though, whether directly related to the ban or not. I think there are bigger trends here, such as 'cigarettes keep you skinny' myths and body shape hysteria (now spreading to boys). The prohibition on under-18s in pubs doesn't help (especially now they're such healthy places)

I agree with comments earlier in the year that strictly enforcing the ban on under-age drinking is making matters worse "What's happening is young people are finding it harder than they ever did to get into pubs and it's creating a vodka drinking culture on the beach and in the town square" - to which we might now add a smoking culture.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/sep/08/drugsandalcohol

Some police chiefs in England are now arguing for the drinking age in pubs to be raised from 18 to 21, like in most parts of the States, part of a trend of babyfying young adults.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

Indeed. It is about protecting workers from inhaling second hand smoke in the workplace. Which has been hugely successful - something like 95% compliance in the UK, iirc.

If smokers choose to respond to the ban by smoking more outside or in the privacy of their own homes, that is of course their choice.

Isn't this the problem, that the unstated assumption underlying the ban is the ideological premise that health is a purely individual ( 'choice') rather than a societal responsibility? This displacement of responsibility for public health onto the individual (a distinctly capitalist prerogative) glosses over the extent to which states have failed to enforce legislation curtailing harmful pollution from industrial agriculture and industrial development in general. It also glosses over the extent to which the dismal state of public transport is directly related to rising rates of fuel emission, and the state's refusal to impose environmental limits on industry and to redistribute corporate wealth (and state wealth) towards public services.

Moreover, despite the fact that the ban locates health as the responsibility of the private citizen, the general public was not consulted in the debates leading up to the ban. Rather, the government and health officials led these debates alongside publicans, token independent politicians, corporate tobacco firms, and a few vocal lobby groups. An analysis of media reports on this issue reveals that the majority of debate focused specifically on commerce, health and sociability.

This tendency for public debate to reflect only the interests of the state and commerce, and to ignore the views of the general public, is consistent with the distinct class and gender bias that the ban reflects. The legislation has a more pronounced effect on working classes and on women, since a much higher proportion of people in semi-skilled or unskilled labour are smokers compared to professionals, and overall a majority of smokers are female. Ironically, the populations most dramatically affected by smoking bans- the labouring classes and women - were not consulted, a practice which raises questions with regard to the class and gendered politics of the 'policing' of the behaviour of less powerful populations.

Another problem is that the exclusive emphasis on the health effects of passive smoking as rationale for the ban serves to deflect attention from the crisis state of public healthcare systems, as an attempt to reduce state responsibility for healthcare by locating health as an individual, rather than a collective or state responsibility. In other words, whether this ban is simply 'following the political correctness of America' and its ideology of radical privatization. which raises questions both with regard to the ban as a symptom of the perceived 'Americanisation' of European cultures - and also with regard to whether this move is a 'smokescreen' for the fact that European healthcare systems are now more likely to move rapidly in the direction of the neoliberal American model while dismantling the existing more 'social democratic' public healthcare models in Europe. The ban demonstrates how the new discourse of 'health' and 'wellness' is rapidly replacing collective models as the new mechanism of surveillance and moral regulation, completely reconfiguring relationships to community, sociability and authority.

 

[KernKätzchen]

My prefered situation would be the introduction of smoke-free bars and clubs while others would remain smoking bars: then punters can drink where they like, and bar staff can work where they like, and everyone's happy.

90% of bartenders I've ever met smoke anyway, and as dominic mentions, you can't very well expect every job to have zero risk associated with it, that would be ludicrous.

Don't really understand why the 'punters can drink where they like' argument gets trotted out again and again. There are two very big holes in it.

1) The decision about whether you go to a smoking establishment or not would not be, and never has been, one made by the individual alone, but one taken by the whole group on a night out. If there's one or more smoker in the group, you inevitably go to the smoking bar, and everyone else suffers. I'm a non-smoker but almost all my friends smoke. Non-smoking bars existed before the ban but my friends deliberately avoided them, as you would. The same applied to the separate non-smoking areas within pubs and clubs. As a minority (usually of one), I had no say. Ever tried trying to argue with eight people that you have a right to choose not to breathe second-hand smoke? You look like a twat. It's not worth it.
2) For the reasons mentioned above, most non-smoking establishments were/would be at a competitive disadvantage in comparison with smoking establishments, resulting in a reduction in the number of non-smoking places to the point where, effectively, there's no choice at all. It's as well to remember that this situation of nominal 'choice' was exactly what we had before the ban. Pubs and bars could be non-smoking if they wanted to. Most of them didn't want to because it hit their profits. In order to ensure a situation in which some choice was still preserved (you can still smoke in the street and at home), a blanket ban had to be issued. I generally resent the vilification of smokers and the nannying attitude of the state on many issues, but this one, to me, is pretty clear-cut.

The argument that 90% of bar staff smoke anyway is potentially circular - did they smoke before they started working in a bar or do they smoke because they're exposed to smoke all day and night and after that, it starts to smell quite nice? How can you know?

You're right that no job comes with zero risk but when a risk is so easily avoided at so little cost to those creating it, it's madness not to try to avoid it.

 

[KernKätzchen]

Isn't this the problem, that the unstated assumption underlying the ban is the ideological premise that health is a purely individual ( 'choice') rather than a societal responsibility?

Why necessarily so? If you look at it another way, you could say that we do see health as a collective societal responsibility, which is why we no longer allow some people's personal choices to negatively affect others' health in public places. I would see the idea (recently voiced in some quarters in Britain) that smokers should not receive treatment on the NHS for illnesses caused by their smoking as much more indicative of this attitude, and much more objectionable. There is a valid point to be made about the individualisation of responsibility for health - however, I'm not sure the smoking ban is the best illustration of it.

This displacement of responsibility for public health onto the individual (a distinctly capitalist prerogative) glosses over the extent to which states have failed to enforce legislation curtailing harmful pollution from industrial agriculture and industrial development in general. It also glosses over the extent to which the dismal state of public transport is directly related to rising rates of fuel emission, and the state's refusal to impose environmental limits on industry and to redistribute corporate wealth (and state wealth) towards public services.
.

You do make a very good point here. Most states have undoubtedly failed in their obligation to ensure that their citizens breathe clean air. But to address this would be much more difficult than the sticking-plaster approach that can be taken to smoking in public places. Banning smoking was a simple matter of passing and enforcing restrictive legislation - something which governments seem to enjoy doing anyway. On the other hand, addressing the air pollution issue would involve the complete rethinking and restructuring of our way of life. Not that this shouldn't be done of course.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

Why necessarily so? If you look at it another way, you could say that we do see health as a collective societal responsibility, which is why we no longer allow some people's personal choices to negatively affect others' health in public places. I would see the idea (recently voiced in some quarters in Britain) that smokers should not receive treatment on the NHS for illnesses caused by their smoking as much more indicative of this attitude, and much more objectionable. There is a valid point to be made about the individualisation of responsibility for health - however, I'm not sure the smoking ban is the best illustration of it.

Back to 'personal choice' again. I suppose beggars 'personal choices' cannot be permitted to 'negatively affect others' health [ 'safety'] in public places' either. This isn't about personal choice, a ludicrous myth, but about the orchestration of fear and intolerance of the Other, while distracting from the real issues.

And looking at it in the way you suggest [ 'another way'] is to resort to a reassuring, nostalgic fantasy as public health systems everywhere (and not just in the UK) are being rapidly privatized (many 'responsible' responses to the crisis ironically accelerating it, the smoking ban being just one glaring example).

Soon they and countless others won't even get to receive treatment in the NHS, because it will be NHS plc: unless you have insurance cover, premiums being unilaterally determined by private health-insurance companies, many of whom will exclude from cover 'objectionable' illnesses at their discretion (as is the norm in the US, for example). But while all of this is happening - ruthlessly and systematically - we can all turn the other cheek and give ourselves a smug, self-congratulatory pat on the back for ridding society of its plague of evil smokers and their filthy smoke. Anything, however token or trivial, to rationalize away the endemic crisis in public health systems.

Privatization Plan of NHS Health Care Revealed

NHS plc: The Privatisation of Our Health Care - Journal of Public Health Policy

Privatisation will wreck NHS, say campaigners

It’s death by a thousand cuts: privatization is slowly killing the NHS

Decline in NHS Workforce

Decline in NHS Beds

Decline in NHS Nursing

Decline in NHS Dentristy

 

[KernKätzchen]

Back to 'personal choice' again. I suppose beggars 'personal choices' cannot be permitted to 'negatively affect others' health [ 'safety'] in public places' either. This isn't about personal choice, a ludicrous myth, but about the orchestration of fear and intolerance of the Other, while distracting from the real issues.

And looking at it in the way you suggest [ 'another way'] is to resort to a reassuring, nostalgic fantasy as public health systems everywhere (and not just in the UK) are being rapidly privatized (many 'responsible' responses to the crisis ironically accelerating it, the smoking ban being just one glaring example).

Wow, quick response HMLT. 'Personal choice' may technically be a myth but it's far from ludicrous: it's the foundation of most Western moral/philosophical systems and you'd be hard pressed to even think without the concept. Questions are always going to remain about where the line between the individual and the social may be drawn most fairly, but reducing the entire notion to the sense in which it is used in New Labour health/privatisation apologetics does not add much to the debate. I'm not sure that eliding issues which we might want to label as matters of personal choice for very good reasons to do with preserving freedom in a non-GWB sense (private drug use including smoking, sexual behaviour, political demonstrations, religious practices etc.) with the ridiculous health service marketisation plans of governments - plans which can only curtail the genuine freedom of the majority in the long run - is a fair move. Even if it were all about 'the orchestration of fear and intolerance of the Other', as you suggest, do you or do you not accept that a single good thing could be done for bad reasons? As I said, I dislike the anti-smoking brigade, but banning smoking in public places is justifiable in terms both of utilitarianism and the defence of the social, the 'public space', even if it was not born of that impulse. You can view it that way. There are many ways of viewing things.
And are you really saying that smoking is comparable to begging in terms of the balance of personal choice/social responsibility involved? That strikes me as in need of justification.

Ha ha. Yep, there's definitely an irony there. [Resists temptation to make bad pun about smokescreens.] But I maintain that the two issues of smoking legislation and health care privatisation are (theoretically at least) separable, and accepting the validity of one does not mean condoning the other.
For the record, I said the prospect of smokers being refused NHS treatment was objectionable, not their illnesses. If you're going to use my words, don't do it in a way that casts aspersions on the attitudes you believe me to hold.
Cheers for the links.

 

[Mr. Tea]

1) The decision about whether you go to a smoking establishment or not would not be, and never has been, one made by the individual alone, but one taken by the whole group on a night out. If there's one or more smoker in the group, you inevitably go to the smoking bar, and everyone else suffers. I'm a non-smoker but almost all my friends smoke. Non-smoking bars existed before the ban but my friends deliberately avoided them, as you would. The same applied to the separate non-smoking areas within pubs and clubs. As a minority (usually of one), I had no say. Ever tried trying to argue with eight people that you have a right to choose not to breathe second-hand smoke? You look like a twat. It's not worth it.

Well hang on a minute, you're conflating two different scenarios here: first you talk about a mostly non-smoking group with (potentially) just one smoker, which will 'inevitably' end up in a smoking bar (are smokers really this selfish? Would a solitary smoker demand the whole group go to a smoking bar, if a non-smoking bar were just as easy to find?), and then talk about your own social group, in which you admit you're in the minority, and would therefore end up in a smoking bar on a purely 'democratic' basis.

Perhaps there could have been tax breaks for non-smoking bars (as you say, there were non-smoking bars before the ban in theory, but hardly any in practice because drove customers away) so as ensure a roughly equal number of smoking and non-smoking bars? That way smokers would have had to get used to compromising and going to non-smoking bars some of the time - where, after all, they can still smoke outside if they want to.

 

[KernKätzchen]

Well hang on a minute, you're conflating two different scenarios here: first you talk about a mostly non-smoking group with (potentially) just one smoker, which will 'inevitably' end up in a smoking bar (are smokers really this selfish? Would a solitary smoker demand the whole group go to a smoking bar, if a non-smoking bar were just as easy to find?), and then talk about your own social group, in which you admit you're in the minority, and would therefore end up in a smoking bar on a purely 'democratic' basis.

Perhaps there could have been tax breaks for non-smoking bars (as you say, there were non-smoking bars before the ban in theory, but hardly any in practice because drove customers away) so as ensure a roughly equal number of smoking and non-smoking bars? That way smokers would have had to get used to compromising and going to non-smoking bars some of the time - where, after all, they can still smoke outside if they want to.

Sorry, I did move too quickly between the different scenarios. The first one was purely theoretical. I have never been in a group situation in which a solitary smoker demanded to go to a smoking bar when there was a non-smoking bar nearby. Before the ban they were few and far between, as you say. So I don't know whether smokers are really that selfish. But then again, I have been in groups which were roughly half smokers and half non-smokers and in which non-smoking pubs were deliberately avoided, prioritising the wishes of the smokers. And before the smoking ban, I never had the experience of anyone in a pub asking me if I minded if they lit up and blew smoke in my face: it was just taken for granted to be ok - it was legitimised by the context.
The whole 'democratic' thing is problematic in any case though. I would say that although both smokers and non-smokers have rights, those rights are not equal to one another. I don't think that the right of a smoker to enjoy a fag, although a perfectly legitimate thing to want to do, is equal to the right of a non-smoker *not* to (passively) smoke, with all the negative consequences that brings (smelly clothes, sore throats, coughing up evil phlegm, increased risk of cancer etc.). I hold the right to breathe clean air as more fundamental than the right to smoke - one is essential for health, the other a luxury, even if it is a luxury one is addicted to. In other words, in this case 'freedom from' trumps 'freedom to', because the negative consequences of smokers' actions are borne by everyone around them including themselves, but the positive benefits are enjoyed only by themselves. I find the idea that everyone else should suffer for some people's pleasure quite unfair, and makes a nonsense of the rights smokers are so fond of invoking in favour of some crap idea of 'sociability' that involves the majority of people being forced to put up with the smelly and dangerous habits of the minority (and smokers are a minority, but even if they weren't the point would still be valid). However, you should have tried telling that to people before the ban. I did. It didn't work, surprisingly.
Your tax breaks thing could have increased the number of non-smoking pubs, true. However, it wouldn't have addressed the social difficulties associated with insisting on a non-smoking pub in a mixed smoker/non-smoker group - the easiest way to get yourself ostracised as a killjoy and never invited out again. Actually, someone once told me that if I wasn't happy with smoking in pubs I shouldn't go to pubs. Come to think of it, some smokers can be quite selfish...

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yeah, fair enough, I'm probably being too idealistic here. Most people who've ever heard my smoking/non-smoking pubs proposal has said "Nice idea, but it'd never work".

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

Wow, quick response HMLT. 'Personal choice' may technically be a myth but it's far from ludicrous: it's the foundation of most Western moral/philosophical systems and you'd be hard pressed to even think without the concept.

Not at all, I'm not referring to the existentialist universe of 'free will' (nor to the foundation of traditional theism - ie that there is a personal, transcendent God who performs magic and possesses free will), but to the pomo capitalist construction of 'personal choice,' [essential to capitalism's functioning] which entails rationalizing some interiorised, psychologistic interpretation of the world over one which emphasizes the real of social and political power, the latter actually determining such 'personal' choices. And we can indeed think without the concept; in fact, we must do so, if we wish to avoid reason giving way to mysticism.

[How is personal choice 'technically' a myth?]

But I maintain that the two issues of smoking legislation and health care privatisation are (theoretically at least) separable, and accepting the validity of one does not mean condoning the other.

Why would you want to - theoretically - separate them? What interests - other than power - does that serve (such a schizophrenic failure of cognitive mapping)?