Ireland’s ban on smoking in buildings other than private homes has been in place for a few weeks now, and appears to be holding. Wandering around Cork and Dublin over the past week, hotels, cafes, shops, and of course bars are all smoke-free. “According to the OECD”:http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/51/35/1913396.pdf, 27 percent of Irish adults smoked every day in 1998 (down from 34 percent in 1985), which puts Ireland in the middle of the distribution internationally. There seem to have been two main effects so far. First, there are a lot of jokes and complaints about the effects of the ban. For instance, you can tell what those around you really smell like, which has come as a nasty shock to some people. The same goes for bar food. Second, all the smokers have been driven out on the street. You must now run a puffing gauntlet outside of hotels, restaurants and bars. It would be worth checking to see whether there isn’t one of those perverse little public goods effects here, people are now much more likely to encounter a faceful of smoke in _true_ public spaces like footpaths, parks and the like than before.
Economists and sociologists tend to look a bit too hard for ironies of this sort, so maybe I’m overreaching. I still think that the best solution to the problem of smoking as it’s usually defined is the one found in many U.S. airports: a special, glass-walled smoking lounge with seats bolted to the floor, where smokers can go to light up and everyone going by can glance in through the haze at the yellowed wallpaper, the dirty floor and the unhappy looks of the addicts staring off into space, not talking to one another, trying to convince themselves that cigarettes really are “sublime”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0822316412/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/.
{ 22 comments }
james 04.19.04 at 12:33 pm
Stories abound of men considering taking up smoking – or at least pretending – cos all the best looking gals are outside smoking. But I couldn’t possibly comment…
Cathal Copeland 04.19.04 at 12:42 pm
Galway, West Coast of Potato Republic, Monday morning
If my brief tour of leading pubs in Galway last night constitutes a representative sample: the ban (though I disapprove of it with my freedom-of-contract hat on) is fabulous from the viewpoint of the ex-smoker: the pubs are half-empty and you can actually find a seat. But perhaps Sunday is untypical, so I won’t rush to judgment.
Presumably the off-licenses are doing a roaring trade though, as smokers will now tend to buy alcohol at half the pub price, hence have more cash to spend on cigarettes, smoke more at home in the presence of their children, who will in ten years time duly sue the government for the asthma they wouldn’t have caught had it not been for the government’s ban on smoking in private, publicly accessible property …. ah yes, the law of unintended consequences.
So I’m putting that freedom of contract hat back on again…
And — believe me — smoking truly is sublime. If I knew I could stick to five cigarettes a day, I would start again tomorrow. Besides, as Kingsley Amis famously said: “There are no pleasures in life worth forgoing in return for two more years in a nursing home in Weston-Super-Mare”.
teep 04.19.04 at 2:11 pm
Ah, smoking. Loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it. Loved it like a rat in a skinner box, happily pressing the lever to oblivion. Loved it for twenty years. Quit now, about a year and five months. I miss it terribly, sometimes, but I can’t have just one. I spent twenty years having just one. I’m pretty sure I know how that story goes and I believe I’ll pass from here on out.
Adam Kotsko 04.19.04 at 2:15 pm
All the various smoking bans are simply further evidence of the repressive nature of postmodern biopolitics.
Also, I usually stare straight ahead and don’t talk to people while doing a wide variety of pleasurable things. Perhaps it’s just me.
mon 04.19.04 at 4:11 pm
“…the yellowed wallpaper, the dirty floor and the unhappy looks of the addicts staring off into space, not talking to one another, trying to convince themselves that cigarettes really are sublime.”
Isn’t it fantastic, now you can’t even have a simple smoke without someone doing a full psychic reading on you right on the spot. And for free!
But why keep it to yourself? You should reveal your precious insights to those dirty addicts each time you spot them, I’m sure they’d be so grateful. It’d be so fantastic if every respectable citizen took upon themselves the task of educating those irresponsible freaks who don’t know what self-restraint is.
They must not get away with it so easily. Someone needs to remind all those criminals who eat and drink and get fat and smoke and do drugs and eat smarties and get rotting teeth that they’re really hurting the healthcare system. They’re also aiding and abetting terrorists. Cos if the government didn’t have to spend all that money on prevention campaigns and treatment, they could fight terrorism better.
It’s clear that a simple ban is not enough. For the greater good, everybody should be required by law to be healthy and fit, like John Abdo on the shopping channel.
neil 04.19.04 at 6:10 pm
I’m not sure Cathal Copeland is correct that people will smoke _more_ at home. Since smoking doesn’t have a cumulative effect, this would only happen if people spent more time at home because they couldn’t go out and smoke. Maybe this is true for some people, but I think that people generally don’t go out primarily so that they can smoke.
After a few years, much less a generation, of life with virtually no smoking in public indoor places, the habit tends to be rightly regarded by smokers and non-smokers alike as foul and inappropriate, like spitting indoors. Most people I know here in California smoke outdoors, or at least out a window, even in their own homes. So the effect might even end up being the reverse — people will smoke less in their homes as well.
Of course, the meterological differences between California and Ireland might be too much for the effects of the smoking ban to be comparable. It was a shrewd idea to start the ban in the spring, but if it doesn’t last past the first frost, then I won’t be too surprised.
spelling fanatic 04.19.04 at 8:53 pm
“You must now run a puffing gauntlet outside of hotels, restaurants and bars.”
Gantlet.
Abiola Lapite 04.19.04 at 9:24 pm
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“smoke more at home in the presence of their children, who will in ten years time duly sue the government for the asthma they wouldn’t have caught had it not been for the government’s ban on smoking in private, publicly accessible property”
I’m not enthusiastic about government-imposed smoking bans myself, but surely any blame that ought to accrue here ought to be on the heads of the incredibly selfish parents who are willing to poison their own children for the sake of their frankly disgusting drug addiction?
All political correctness aside, cigarette smokers are just as much junkies as the worst crackhead or heroine fiend on the street corner. I don’t see that they have anything whatsoever to be proud about with their habit.
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Kieran Healy 04.19.04 at 10:10 pm
But why keep it to yourself? You should reveal your precious insights to those dirty addicts each time you spot them, I’m sure they’d be so grateful. It’d be so fantastic if every respectable citizen took upon themselves the task of educating those irresponsible freaks who don’t know what self-restraint is.
Hey Mon: You sound really tense. I think maybe you need a cigarette.
Keith's Dumb Friend 04.19.04 at 11:41 pm
Last year, by happenstance, I flew from Dulles to Copenhagen. At Dulles, I was in the glass smoking cage with the other degenerates. Looking around, it seemed that everyone in the room just happened off their tractors.
Eight hours later, viola, I am at the airport in Copenhagen where the beautiful people openly smoked in the airport (while drinking delicious lattes), with kids in tow.
God, I love Europe.
sennoma 04.20.04 at 1:31 am
It’d be so fantastic if every respectable citizen took upon themselves the task of educating those irresponsible freaks who don’t know what self-restraint is.
What would really be fantastic is if all of these responsible smokers who know all about self-restraint would resist lighting up in bus stations, public porch spaces and (my favourite) right outside various exits, right in front of the “NO SMOKING” sign. It would be wonderful if these enlightened non-addicts, who could stop any time they choose and certainly don’t HAVE to light up the moment they set foot out of doors, would pause to consider the effect on others of their clouds of noxious effluvia. Until they show signs of being capable of that, however, I vote with Kieran for the sad little sealed rooms. (It would also be nice if people would stop with the childish analogies — all those criminals who eat and drink and get fat and smoke and do drugs and eat smarties and get rotting teeth [are] really hurting the healthcare system — but one can only hope for so much.)
Ophelia Benson 04.20.04 at 5:03 pm
“the habit tends to be rightly regarded by smokers and non-smokers alike as foul and inappropriate, like spitting indoors.”
I must be awfully fussy – I think spitting is pretty damn foul and inappropriate (and dangerous, if you keep TB and how it’s transmitted in mind) even outdoors. Little heaps of phlegm on the pavement are not my favourite thing.
Ophelia Benson 04.20.04 at 5:25 pm
“the habit tends to be rightly regarded by smokers and non-smokers alike as foul and inappropriate, like spitting indoors.”
I must be awfully fussy – I think spitting is pretty damn foul and inappropriate (and dangerous, if you keep TB and how it’s transmitted in mind) even outdoors. Little heaps of phlegm on the pavement are not my favourite thing.
Ophelia Benson 04.20.04 at 5:29 pm
Drat the stupid thing! I got an error message and looked in a new window to see if it had posted, and it hadn’t, I swear it hadn’t! So I posted again, and it had – twenty minutes ago. Wretched lying dog.
jdsm 04.20.04 at 5:53 pm
The problem with the whole banning smoking debate is that people think it’s about morality and rights, which it isn’t. It’s about pragmatic self-interest. For years and years smokers have been culturally dominant and have used that dominance to impose their habit on other people. Now enough people don’t smoke that the dominance is reduced and they’re using whatever arguments they can to make sure they don’t have to deal with the smoke anymore. People talking about the rights of bartenders and the rights of smokers is a complete red-herring. Non-smokers don’t give a fuck about rights anymore than smokers care about consistency and slippery slope arguments – it’s a fight for self-interest by other means. As a non-smoker I’m glad we’re winning at last. It makes the world a nicer place for me.
Decnavda 04.20.04 at 7:55 pm
Second, all the smokers have been driven out on the street. You must now run a puffing gauntlet outside of hotels, restaurants and bars.
I live in San Francisco. That was a serious problem here in the mid-Nineties after we instituted a similar ban. For the past several years, however, that has not been a problem at all, and it is extremely rare to smell cigarette smoke even outside where permitted. I don’t exactly know why, as we have not changed the laws, but guess the smokers have adapted in ways that that are good for the rest us. Public smoking is rude shock for me when I go back to visit realtives in Virginia.
clew 04.21.04 at 12:05 am
I’d like there to be a smoking-premises license expensive enough that a reasonable number of restaurants didn’t have one. I’d like the money gathered to be put into building smokers’ shelters in public places, to keep the exiled folk out of the rain and keep their smoke out of my lungs.
mon 04.21.04 at 11:56 am
Hey Mon: You sound really tense. I think maybe you need a cigarette.
Heh, how did I not see that coming. But no thanks, Kieran, I don’t smoke. I happen to dislike cigarettes as much as you do. I just don’t automatically dislike people who smoke, you know. I don’t even see all these rude smokers puffing in people’s faces all the time were it not for a ban. I must have been lucky.
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sennoma: if that wasn’t clear already, the childish analogies are not my own, I was only mocking them. They are being made by those take a view of legislation on health concerns that is a bit too authoritarian and moralistic for my liking.
mon 04.21.04 at 12:01 pm
God, I love Europe.
Nah, Europe is caving in to the control freaks too. The last smokers’ haven is the Middle East. But not for long! The day Baghdad gets a smoking ban, that’s when you’ll know it’s been truly _liberated_.
mon 04.21.04 at 12:35 pm
Now a serious question: why in Ireland of all places didn’t they think of a ban that allowed for a compromise solution for both pub/restaurant owners and customers – ie. require those pubs and restaurants who do want to keep allowing some of their customers to smoke inside to equip their places with separate rooms and specific air filtering systems. That’s more expensive for owners, but they could be given that option too, as it’s been done in other European countries. Why the full ban instead?
Was the alternative ever discussed?
Keith Gaughan 04.21.04 at 7:07 pm
*why in Ireland of all places didn’t they think of a ban that allowed for a compromise solution for both pub/restaurant owners and customers – ie. require those pubs and restaurants who do want to keep allowing some of their customers to smoke inside to equip their places with separate rooms and specific air filtering systems.*
Bar and restaurant workers didn’t want it. It’s a workplace ban (though some institutions seem to be extending it with gusto: here in CIT, you can’t even smoke outside unless it’s in a smoking shelter!), and they didn’t feel they should be singled out. I don’t blame them, quite frankly.
Now, who I feel sorry for are the lorry drivers and salespeople who’s vehicles are their workplace. They’re the only person there, and they’re not harming anybody else.
mon 04.22.04 at 11:41 am
Ok, I do agree it’s an issue of workers, but what if the total ban results in less people going to pubs, therefore more pub workers losing jobs?
I just think the option of a separate smoking area would have been a wiser route. The law could also require pub/restaurant owners not to demand employees work in the smoking area if they don’t want to. You could have all sort of strict regulations to ensure both workers and customers are not exposed to smoke, and still allow the smokers in, and the owners to avoid the risk of losing revenue. Everybody could have been happy.
When you have the option of a compromise that satisfies everybody, it just doesn’t make sense to discard it. That’s what I don’t understand.
Unless of course, the fanfare of the campaigs against smokers – rather than against cigarette makers… who are allowed to add all sorts of crap to tobacco and get away with it – is more important than practical results.
I grew up in an industrial area where the cancer and leukemia rate is three times as much as average, especially in children. I’ve never seen anyone closing down plants that pump out tons of filth each day. They just shift the limits in regulations. You never get radical bans there.
What about those workers, and people living in highly industrial areas?
If only bans motivated by health concerns were more consistent. Instead, it just seems like smoking has taken absolute precedence over all concerns about pollution.
That’s one of the things I find most offputting. Not the ban itself, but the ways in which it’s used to overshadow other environmental concerns. I think that’s a dangerous trend.
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