While the majority of cities in North America have butted out over the past few years, many places in the world are currently counting down the days until smoking is no longer allowed in any public spaces. England is one of the next places on the list and, knowing how many smokers there are over the pond, I think it will be interesting to see how things go down on July 1, the day the ban comes into effect.
I have somehow ended up visiting a number of cities in the days leading up to their own imminent smoking bans, and in each one, the major concerns were expressed by pub and bar owners. Many seemed to think that smoking customers would choose to stay at home rather than smoke outside on a night out and business would sink like a cancerous lung. However, I think that in most cases, the draw of going out and socializing has far outweighed the inconvenience of having to move outside for five minutes to go for a quick ciggy. No matter how much fuss both smokers and bar owners made, in every place I've been in the aftermath of a smoking ban, the pubs are still full and there are still lines out the door at the nightclubs. Even in tiny, rural prairie villages, all of the local farmers and oilfield workers head outside for their nicotine fix.
So what is the plan in England, where there are approximately 60,000 pubs and even more bars and nightclubs? Having worked in a pub in London where customers were notorious for trying to "wind up" -- aka tease -- the staff about everything, I really don't see things going as smoothly as they have in other places. According to this, at least 200 publicans (owners and managers of pubs) are planning on flouting the ban on the first day, and continuing to do so as long as patrons still want light up. Some are claiming that it's not about health issues but rather about personal freedom issues. They say that smokers should have the right to smoke wherever they'd like without having Big Brother telling them to butt out. But what about all of the non-smokers out there who would like to enjoy a night out without breathing in toxins from cigarettes?
Where do the rights of one group begin and the other end? I think that as a bartender in a London pub, I had the right to not have customers lean over the bar and blow smoke in my face (which happened constantly) and I think the owners of the 19th-century pub I worked at had the right to not have cigarettes put out on the pub carpets and upholstered furniture. I suppose in the end it doesn't matter which side you're on if the British Government is serious about enforcing the new law, as other governments have been. No matter how big a fuss the public has kicked up in other cities and countries, the smoking bans have held. So what do you think? Is this simply a healthy issue or is it a matter of personal freedoms at risk?