style=”color:#666666″>Some predict doom for the pub trade. Smoking has been banned from pubs, restaurants and that public place where you like to relax, and the pro smoking lobby and David Hockney predict the end of civilization.
Much of the fears from the pub trade relate to the Irish experience.
Recently at a gathering of the Scottish pub industry, Tadg O’Sullivan, chief executive of the Vintners’ Federation of Ireland, said that the ban in Ireland had been an “absolute disaster” for publicans, with 600 closures and 12,000 mainly full-time job losses. In fact the Licensed Vintners Association has released figures showing that in Dublin sales rapidly fell by 16% and employment levels reduced by 14%.
Erudite artist David Hockney put it in more personal terms, when in a recent letter to the Guardian he said: “Gordon Brown is a prig P.R.I.G., a dreary atheistic Calvinistic prig, who I’m sure will never be elected in England. He goes along with a “health lobby” whose view of life itself I detest.”
“I have utter contempt for it. I feel I am entitled to my opinion. I don’t mind prigs but when they want to take my little corner as well, I have a right to argue against their dreary view of life contaminating mine.”
“This utterly over the top legislation is tyrannical (mine Host gone for a Burton) and is spreading a dreadful intolerance.”
Reading between the lines, and allowing for the language of diplomacy then, we deduce that Mr Hockney is against the ban.
Yet there is another side to the argument. According to the Irish Central Statistics Office, bar sales in Ireland have continued to rise steadily since the ban. And according to the office of National Statistics, 20% of people said they would visit pubs more often if smoking was restricted, while only 4% would visit less often
In the UK, press attention has been focused on the Irish experience, but while the world - and Dame Edna at the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games criticise Americans for not considering the outside world, it does seem that the UK press is equally guilty of not taking into account what happens stateside.
In fact the US experience has been quite different from what the pessimists expect in Scotland. Smoking was banned in New York, for example, on March 30 2003 and a year on, business tax receipts from restaurants and bars were up 8.7 percent from the previous year.
In California, smoking was banned in 1997 and both restaurant and bar receipts have improved every year since.
As for Mr Hockney’s call for freedom to smoke, and the threat to our liberties the ban represents, it could equally be argued that smoking in pubs is a threat to the freedom of non smokers’ rights to breath clean air. And then there’s the health implications.
According to a report entitled “Lifting the smokescreen: 10 reasons for a smoke free Europe” published by the Smoke Free Partnership (not altogether neutral then) 79,000 people die each year throughout the EU as a result of passive smoking.
Just like smoking, going to the pub for many people is a habit. A habit that many non-smokers just don’t have. After a ban, gradually over time, we suspect a gradual influx of new regulars as they find the clean air pub habit.
But in the short term, it would appear that business will probably take a turn for the worse. And the pattern will no doubt be repeated in England when the ban is enforced south of the Scottish border.
And some pubs will struggle as a result, with many going out of business.
Our biggest fear is this. The pubs that survive will probably be the ones owned by companies with greater resources. And the danger then is more privately owned pubs being replaced by nationwide clones.
Sources
Now we see the light
Herald
10 Reasons For A Smoke Free Europe - New Report Issued In The European Parliament
Medical News Today
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