Despite promising to ensure politics “treads more lightly” on the lives of people, Keir Starmer has recently announced that his government is considering the prohibition of smoking in pub gardens, parks and the outside of nightclubs. According to Starmer, banning smoking in public places needs to be done to reduce pressure on the NHS and to mitigate against second hand smoke. Neither argument works. Smokers are not a strain on the state and nor does the occasional wisp of smoke in a pub garden warrant infringing upon the publican’s private property. A liberal society must be opposed to this proposal with the utmost force. 

For Starmer to call smokers “a huge burden” on the taxpayer is patently false, and, quite frankly, an insult 

Starmer states that smoking is “a huge burden on the NHS” and “a burden on the taxpayer”. Yes, smoking does cost the NHS about £4bn a year, yet, this fact alone is misleading in the extreme. This is because smokers reduce costs to the taxpayer by about £10bn every year due to their early deaths, and contribute about £9bn in tobacco taxes too. Overall, smokers contribute about £14bn of funds to the Treasury on a net analysis. Were smokers to all quit tomorrow, taxes would have to go up or public spending be cut. For Starmer to call smokers “a huge burden” on the taxpayer is patently false, and, quite frankly, an insult to all smokers who are coughing up for our public services. Discouraging smoking by banning it in public gardens to unburden the NHS will backfire.

The argument for banning smoking in public places due to its negative externality should be taken seriously however. To conduct a proper analysis of this issue we need to break down public places in two. First, there are commercial venues such as pub gardens and the back of nightclubs grounded on private property, and, second, there are common spaces such as streets and parks which have rights of way across them. Commercial venues are private property; it is up to their private owners to set their terms of use. Imposing a smoking ban on publicans is wrong because it robs them of an element of their private property. And if private property is to be thrown to the wind is banning smoking in private gardens next? I suspect many people will dispute this analogy, after all, they will contend, no one has to go to a house party with smokers.  

Well, neither does anyone have to go to a pub garden which permits smoking. No one is entitled to have a pub garden provided to them, hence, neither is anyone entitled to a pub garden provided to them on amiable terms. Turning up at a pub garden and saying it’s wrong that they permit smoking because you don’t like the smell is like turning up to a friend’s barbeque and having a go at him for not getting smoke free charcoal instead of the normal kind. In both cases, the complainer should simply be happy there exists these locations; he was never entitled to them in the first place. What about the waiters and waitresses though? Are they not entitled to work in pub gardens totally absent of smoke? Again, no. Freedom to contract enables employers and employees to agree to working conditions which might be marginally risky. 

If capitalists can hire binmen and builders whose fatality rate on the job is 823 per cent and 478 per cent higher than the average worker, surely, a tiny wisp of smoke can be inhaled by a waitress. And should it be argued the difference between the cases is we cannot get rid of building and binning even though they are dangerous because we can’t do without them, are we to ban fishing which is 1722 per cent more dangerous than the average job, and, more dangerous than agriculture. We don’t need fish after all; we could have beef instead. Clearly this is ridiculous reasoning.  Starmer hasn’t got a leg to stand on when it comes to banning smoking on commercial venues. 

Now, I should note, the figure that second hand smoke costs society £713m is misleading. This is because it is overwhelmingly made up of the costs to the partners of smokers. Given partners freely choose to incur this cost it cannot count as a negative externality. However, what about those instances where it plausibly looks as if breathing in second hand smoke is not a free choice. Let’s turn to common spaces. 

A few people will argue second hand smoke infringes upon their right to breathe fresh air, hence, smoking in the street, parks and in private venues next to rights of way should be banned. Liberals are sympathetic to this moral reasoning. Nevertheless, individuals don’t have the right to not occasionally breathe in a tiny amount of smoke. Almost everyone accepts people can have bonfires in their garden, yet, the cancer risk from burnt wood is 12 times worse than cigarette smoke according to the Environmental Protection Agency (due to its greater particulate pollution and the fact it lasts 40 times longer in the body). A consistent application of moral reasoning of the few people dictates fires in gardens, fire pits in pubs and Guy Fawkes Night are all banned. This is implausible, thus, such a stringent right to breathe fresh air is implausible too. I want to press this point. 

At the very most, walking past smokers will cost you two seconds of your life each year. If two seconds of expected costs are going to be taken as violating a right, which cannot be accepted, society must grind to a halt. People would have to be banned from going outside with a cold, driving would have to be stopped, raising bricks up higher floors ended and walking with a hot drink would have to be prohibited, because all of these impose a similar expected cost as outdoor smoking does. Crackers! As English judge Baron Bramwell argued in the Bamford v. Turnley Court Case of 1862, concerning the passage of smoke over property lines, justice should accept “a rule of give and take, live and let live.” 

In sum, Starmer’s arguments for a smoking ban in pub gardens simply don’t work. Smokers are not a strain on the state, and, respecting private property requires permitting publicans the right to permit garden smoking. The argument we have a right against inhaling a tiny whiff of smoke is implausible too as it would require banning fires, going out with a cold and driving past people. Clearly, a free society requires we accept the teeny tiny cost of occasionally walking past a smoker. To think otherwise is to grind society to a halt.