The Eye

A ban on smoking in public places came into effect at 06:00 BST in England.

Like anywhere else where such a ban has been bought in, there have been lots of arguments for and against it.

Those for a ban point to the health issues of being in smoky places.

Those against a ban point out their rights to smoke.

Now, I used to smoke. At one point, I used to smoke the best part of 40 cigarettes a day. I kind of wanted to quit, but couldn’t bring myself to do it for a long time. I know, for sure, that 20 years ago, I’d have been firmly in the anti-ban camp, and ranting on about the oppression of the people and so on.

A little bit of that side of me is still there, I dislike government interference in our personal lives, but experience in those 20 years has taught me that sometimes, just sometimes, it can actually help.

Wearing crash helmets on motorcycles saves lives; as do seat belts. I’m all for banning use of hand-held cellphones whilst driving, as some thoughtless idiot can kill someone else so easily that way. Only last week, a woman in England admitted she was texting when driving, which led to a fatal accident. How stupid can you get?

Anyway, back to the smoking ban. I’m glad I quit smoking. It was making me cough too much in the mornings for a start. I don’t go around preaching to people though. If you want to smoke, go right ahead. It’s your money, it’s your health. I do tend to believe the years of medical research that says smoking isn’t good for you. This research has been going on since before the 1950’s when Sir Richard Doll first showed a proven link between smoking and lung cancer.

As I say I don’t go preaching about how I quit. I’ll tell you if you ask, but I don’t ram it down people’s throats. The best thing about quitting though? No, I don’t really feel any better for it as such. OK, so I don’t stink of stale tobacco any more, but when I smoked I couldn’t smell it anyway of course. Nope, it’s not that really. The best thing, and it was certainly the thing in England, where you’re taxed up the Ying Yang and back for almost everything (a pack of 20 is around US$11, of which tax is around $9), was that I was feeding less of my hard-earned paycheck to the tax pig. That’s truly a great feeling. Heck if I still smoked 40 a day, at $22 bucks a day or $154 a week of which $126 is tax, that’s over $6,500 a year in tax alone, you get my point?

I used to help manage a pub. Even a couple of hours in the bar meant I went home with stinking clothes, so I also save on the laundry bill.

People can still smoke at home, in their car, in the street. Some people will rail against what they see as Big Brother, others welcome the chance of what they see as free state aid to give up.

Finally, I wonder what the companies that create aids to quitting such as Nicotine patches make of it all. Will it help their business as folks rush to buy patches to wear for a night out, instead of smoking, or will it harm their business as folks that were thinking of quitting and might have bought patches to wear in their smoky local, now find it easier to simply quit anyway, without needing such aids?

Whatever anyone thinks about these smoking bans that are slowly but surely coming into force all over the western world, they’re almost certainly here to stay.

As an aside, with tobacco companies markets shrinking anyway in the Americas and Europe, they now seem to be targeting third world countries. As people in the third world slowly get a little more wealth smoking in some parts is actually on the rise.