Final, final thoughts on the smoking ban anniversary

Earlier in the week Chris Snowdon posted his final thoughts on the smoking ban. These are my final, final thoughts on the smoking ban anniversary.

It may be small consolation but the best articles by far were scathing about the ban and its consequences.

Pride of place goes to Brendan O'Neil, editor of Spiked, who wrote a coruscating piece for The Spectator online (The smoking ban ripped the soul out of this country).

Brendan was a speaker at the Forest Freedom Dinner in 2014. This year's speaker, Rod Liddle, also wrote a strongly worded diatribe about the ban that appears in the print edition of the same magazine (Being anti-smoking damages your mental health).

That apart, media coverage of the anniversary was inevitably driven by the narrative, promoted by ASH, Cancer Research and Public Health England, that the ban has been an "enormous success", has improved public health and driven down smoking rates (1.9 million fewer smokers since the ban was introduced in 2007).

Forest attempted to disrupt this tendentious argument (or confidence trick) with the publication of 'Road To Ruin? The impact of the smoking ban on pubs and personal choice' and the latest Forest/Populus poll that showed that, a decade after the ban, the public is still split on the issue of allowing separate, well-ventilated smoking rooms in pubs and clubs.

We issued three press releases:

Report: Decade of the smoking ban has decimated England's pubs (26/6)
Public split on allowing separate smoking rooms in pubs and clubs (29/6)
Key to smoking cessation is choice and education, say campaigners (30/6)

The latter was issued in response to an ASH press release that was embargoed until the following day (July 1). Our response read:

"It's disingenuous to suggest the smoking ban has been a significant factor in reducing smoking rates.

"For five years after 2007 smoking rates fell in line with the pre-ban trend. The most substantial fall in smoking rates happened after 2012, a period that coincided with the increasing popularity of e-cigarettes.

"Attempts to force people to quit are invariably counter-productive. Education and support for less harmful products is the way to go, not prohibition and other restrictive practices."

The report on pub closures generated some coverage. However the poll was largely ignored with the exception of a report in the Morning Advertiser (the pub trade title) and a passing mention in the BBC News report that appeared online on July 1.

The comment above was quoted by a handful of media online but not as many as we'd have liked (see my comments about the Press Association below).

Here's a selection of reports we generated or were quoted in:

Pro-smoking group calls for review 10 years after ban (Morning Advertiser)
Public split over smoking rooms in pubs (Morning Advertiser)
‘We don't need to go back to the days of stinking like a rancid ashtray’: Your reactions to pro-smoking group’s call to review smoking ban (Morning Advertiser)
Cigarette ban killing off British pubs: 11,000 lost in 10 years (Daily Star)
End of the smoking ban? Urgent calls for major law change 10 years on (Daily Star)
10 years on, health campaigners celebrate 'enormous success' of the smoking ban (ITV News)
Anniversary of UK smoking ban 'marks a decade of success' (Sky News)
Smoking ban: Number of UK smokers falls by nearly two million in 10 years (Independent)
A decade after UK smoking ban introduced, how has the law affected Bristol? (Bristol Post)
The smoking ban came in TEN years ago - so has it worked? (Liverpool Echo)
The smoking ban came into effect 10 years ago, but has it worked? (Cornwall Live)
Smoking ban saw a huge shift in our pub culture (Lancashire Evening Post)
'Sledgehammer' smoking ban ruling played part in pub and club decline in Bolton (Bolton News)
Decade of smoke-free laws celebrated with smoking rates at lowest level ever (News & Star)
Smoking rebel says ban has ‘destroyed our pubs’ (Blackpool Gazette)
The smoking ban ten years on: Do you agree with the law? (Daily Echo)

Our poll/pub closures report also got passing mentions here:

Pub smoking ban: 10 charts that show the impact (BBC News)
The smoking ban turns ten. What did it really achieve? (Spectator)

One or two local newspaper columnists mentioned Forest. Two examples: Jayne Dowle: Clearing the air a decade on from the smoking ban (Yorkshire Post) and the aforementioned Blaise Tapp: The smoking ban was a great idea – can we take it further? (The News and Yorkshire Post).

Rob Lyons, author of our 'Road To Ruin?' report, wrote articles for Spiked online and Conservative Home (where he took a bit of a kicking for suggesting the Conservatives might readdress the issue of smoking in pubs):

How the smoking ban killed off the local boozer (Spiked)
Ten years on from the smoking ban, the Tories could gain by rolling it back (ConHome)

Forest was also quoted in reports that followed an interview with Nick Hogan in the Manchester Evening News. Nick was the publican jailed for failing to pay fines after he allowed customers to smoke on his premises on 1st July 2007. (For those who don't know, I was at Salford Jail on the day he was released. It was one of the more surreal days I've had in this job – see Nick Hogan: behind the scenes.)

The only man ever jailed over the smoking ban has given up cigarettes... but he's not given up speaking his mind (Manchester Evening News)
Only person to ever be jailed over smoking ban doesn't regret a thing - but he has quit cigarettes (Daily Mirror)

It's worth noting that dozens of reports appeared online last weekend credited to the Press Association. The report the PA filed and sent to all media focussed on reports/polls published by Cancer Research UK and ASH and featured quotes from CRUK, ASH and Public Health England without, it seemed, a single opposing comment.

I complained in the strongest possible terms. In response they said they did include a quote from Forest (but only, it seems, after I had rung the news desk). At no stage did the PA contact Forest (or anyone else with an opposing view) for a comment, which speaks volumes.

In the event our quote was omitted from all but a handful of the many reports published online by dozens of local titles and a handful of national publications. Go figure.

As for broadcast interviews, a pre-arranged interview for Channel 5 News was cancelled as I was in sight of the studio having got up at 4.00am to drive 90 miles to London. C'est la vie.

I did however do interviews for Five Live, BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Sussex, Bristol, Kent, Manchester, Newcastle, Three Counties and LBC.

Final, final thought: if I hear one more person applaud the smoking ban on the grounds that they no longer have to endure a smoky pub or wash their clothes to remove the "stench of tobacco" I may not be responsible for my actions.

I don't doubt that back in the day (the Fifties and Sixties) pubs were indeed very smoky environments. Having said that I wasn't there so don't take my word for it. Come the late Seventies and Eighties, when I spent a lot of time in pubs, I genuinely don't remember it being a problem.

Indeed, as a non-smoker and a regular pub goer from my late teens to my mid thirties I can honestly remember only one occasion when I entered a pub and it was so smoky that my eyes watered. (It was also heaving with people and unbearably hot which was not the fault of the smokers.)

Many pubs, in England especially, introduced air filtration systems so smoky environments, in my experience at least, were increasingly rare. At the very least people had a choice, with some pubs being better than others, and they voted with their feet.

To suggest, as many people have, that before the ban pubs and bars were invariably smoke-filled is a myth that has been allowed to develop almost without challenge.

It may be true of the traditional back street boozer but it certainly wasn't true of the many new bars that opened up in the Eighties and Nineties, like the Pitcher & Piano chain that had a bar very close to the office where I worked in south Clapham.

The point is, people were able to choose the environment in which they ate and drank, and the market changed in accordance with public demand.

As for having to wash your clothes after returning from the pub, did no-one wash their clothes before the smoking ban? Did no-one ever sweat or get their clothes dirty in other ways? Was it the norm, before the smoking ban, to wear the same shirt several days' running?

I never, ever recall this being a problem until a handful of anti-smokers began to make an issue of "having to wash our clothes after visiting the pub".

If it was that bad the public would surely have supported, by an overwhelming majority, a ban on smoking in pubs and bars.

Instead, according to the Office for National Statistics, in 2005 - the year before MPs voted for the ban - only 30 per cent wanted a comprehensive ban, and you can be sure that figure includes many who were not regular pub goers and were never going to become regular pub goers.

Anyway we are where we are and if the past fortnight has taught me anything it's this.

You can argue all you like about the pros and cons of the smoking ban, but one thing is clear. The ban gave the green light to a level of intolerance that has been shocking to behold.

Note too how easily people have been persuaded that even the briefest exposure to 'secondhand' smoke is a serious health risk.

This has been achieved by a combination of zealots and fanatics working hand-in-hand with a well-funded public health industry that believes the end (a smoke and nicotine-free world) justifies the means.

The smoking ban was the moment propaganda became more important than truth and education, and choice and personal responsibility were replaced by bigotry and discrimination.

Sadly, as the response to Rob Lyons' article for ConservativeHome shows, this attack on pleasure can be found right across the political spectrum.

Health fascists are no longer limited to a tiny minority. They're all around us and unless we fight back things will only get worse.