Time to scrap the smoking ban

My grandfather was a big cigarette and pipe man until one New Year’s Day in the 1960s when he jacked it all in favour of a lifelong devotion to Sherbet Lemons. Thirty years later, when I was at university, he sent me a letter with some money-saving tips, one of which was: “Why don’t you quit the silly smoking habit? I did and now I can stand at the bar smelling someone else’s cigar and it costs me nowt.”

The positive externalities of secondhand smoke are rarely discussed, but as my grandad’s little life hack shows, they do exist. When smoking was allowed in pubs, the biggest benefit for many nonsmokers was that it meant they had a pub to go to. Thousands of them closed after the smoking ban and thousands more reduced their opening hours once it became clear that old men smoking roll-ups were a more important source of income than middle class families having an occasional Sunday roast. 

The smoking ban nevertheless remains sacrosanct in the progressive mind. It is perhaps the totemic achievement of the Blairites. It transformed not only the built environment which, 19 years later, remains covered in “No Smoking” signs, but the mindset of the British public. The idea of amending it, let alone repealing it, is seen as almost insane by millions of people. Indeed, the government is quietly trying to expand the law to include vaping. No one can seriously claim that there are any health risks from secondhand e-cigarette vapour, but there has been virtually no public opposition to banning it in every pub, club and workplace in the land because the smoking ban set the precedent that if enough people disapprove of an activity and only a minority of people engage in that activity, then it should be against the law.  

Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore, incited howls of outrage even from his own supporters this week when he espoused the low-status opinion that pubs should be allowed to have a separate, well ventilated room in which people can smoke, as is the norm in much of Europe. “I detest smoking.” he said. “I would not use these rooms, but should that stop others?” In my view, Lowe did not go far enough. If a landlord wants to allow smoking throughout his pub, that is no business of the government. But even Lowe’s watered down policy proposal, accompanied by an elucidation of the most basic liberal principles, was treated as if he was calling for the slaughter of the first-born. 

No cliché went untouched. Why should I be forced to breathe someone’s ghastly cigarette? Why should I come home with my clothes stinking of smoke? What if the smoke drifts into another room? What about the poor bar staff? It was the only good thing Labour ever did!

Most of these arguments are undermined by the fact that no one would be forced to enter the smoking room. Insofar as bar staff would be obliged to enter it from time to time, the solution would be to make this part of the job description and only hire people who are smokers or who have no objection to going into a room in which people are smoking. In any case, with modern air conditioning the air in the smoking room would probably be cleaner than the air outside.

It normalised extremism and legitimised the most anti-social and misanthropic people in the country

But the smoking ban was never really about secondhand smoke. The simple fact was that many nonsmokers disliked the smell of tobacco and, flattered by decades of propaganda which portrayed them as superior beings, they felt entitled to demand that it be eliminated from any building they might ever choose to enter. That this required a step-change in state control was welcomed by socialists and progressives as another milestone in the regimentation of society. More surprising was the failure of so many conservatives and liberals to push back on this assault on personal liberty and property rights. Instead, they joined forces with a “public health” lobby that was now unshackled from liberal norms in a broader war against other supposed vices.

On this issue, Rupert Lowe has said nothing that would not have been considered common sense until relatively recently. Before it became socially acceptable to be intolerant and authoritarian, the idea of banning smoking in a designated smoking room would have been seen as inherently irrational. The change in mentality of the last twenty years has been partly driven by the smoking ban itself. It normalised extremism and legitimised the most anti-social and misanthropic people in the country who would, in earlier times, have been the subject of ridicule. The result is that the traditional British concept of live and let live is fading away and, as the backlash to Rupert Lowe shows, is utterly alien to a large section of society.