The Ban

By David McCombe

This year, on March 29th, a ban on smoking in all workplaces, including pubs, was signed into law in the Irish Republic, although not without controversy and objection.

One month on, The Other View has been examining the affect the ban is having on the Irish economy, the popularity or otherwise of such a ban, its enforcement/policing, and generally drawing parallels to other countries where smoking has been banned or partially banned.

Firstly, however, the reader must be aware of the history of tobacco before judging outright the banning of tobacco. Smoking tobacco has always attracted strong criticism. For example, you could argue that it was James I of England who in 1603 started the first government anti-smoking campaign, with his famous treatise "A Counterblaste to Tobacco."

The first government anti-smoking campaign dates from the early 17th century.

Shortly after, James I raised the import duty on tobacco by exactly two thousand per cent. His subjects evaded the tax by smuggling and home cultivation. So James switched tactics again and, in 1615, made the import of tobacco a royal monopoly: the strongest opponent of smoking had become one of its main beneficiaries and still, despite such controversy, tobacco consumption spread around the world within a few centuries.

Originally from the Americas, where the natives used tobacco for ceremonial and medicinal purposes, its import into Europe, following Columbus' voyages, marked a new stage in its history. From the 15th century its consumption steadily grew. By the 18th century tobacco was traded internationally and had become part of most cultures. By the 19th century, cigarettes had started to supplant its use in pipe smoking, chewing and snuff.

But it was only with the invention of an efficient cigarette machine in 1880, which produced 200 cigarettes a minute, that the modern tobacco industry came into being. Mass production heralded a drop in cigarette prices and made mass consumption possible.
Tobacco has remained controversial to this day. Nonetheless millions of people around the world continue to smoke.

Having familiarised oneself with tobacco and tobacco smoking, in today’s modern world with an “environmentally friendly and healthy conscious” society, science has linked this addictive habit and the affects of passive smoking on NON-smokers to many illnesses, especially cancer and heart disease. Hence the lobbying by the passive smokers brigade for a ban.
However, controversy has surrounded the ban, based on statistics from California and New South Wales, and the debate over whether banning works. Is a ban detrimental to the economy? Having visited Donegal in the first week of the ban the writer did discover a drop in numbers frequenting bars, and witnessed the alternative practice of hotel guests taking a “carry-out” to their hotel rooms where they could drink and smoke at will.

Encountering some Scottish visitors to Donegal that weekend, the writer in the course of conversation was asked if the ban extended to “the North”. Upon hearing that it did not, the view of these particular visitors was that they would be spending weekends in Northern Ireland in future.

The Belfast Telegraph (April 7th) reports smokers being assaulted when they nip outside the pub for a cigarette. Dr. Cliff Beirne, consultant surgeon at Dublin’s St. James’ Hospital states that 50% of patients who turned up at casualty during the first weekend of the ban with broken jaws were assaulted outside a pub when having a cigarette. The vast majority of facial fractures now - over 70% - are caused by assaults, and a significant numbers of these are where there is alcohol, plus or minus drugs involved.

When one recollects the old westerns depicting the saloon complete with sawdust and spittoons, and the cowboys chewing tobacco and targeting a spittoon with their spit, then one must draw uniformity on health grounds, and the effects of chewing tobacco/using snuff in comparison to smoking tobacco; chewing tobacco is on the increase, especially amongst young people, in the US. It is more addictive and a lot more potent than cigarette smoking. The following is an extract from one girl’s story of addiction to “CHAW”: –

“I finally quit using all tobacco more than a year ago, at the age of 23. Doing research on the life and death of Bill Tuttle has profoundly affected my determination to stay quit forever. (Tuttle was the major league baseball player and anti-tobacco crusader who lost half his face and his entire life to oral cancer.

My obituary of Tuttle appeared in Tobacco Control 7(4): I still miss nicotine occasionally, and I miss that head-spinning chew buzz. But it's hard to have the snarl of a tough girl without a face, a tongue, or teeth”.

Jane Imholte - Association for Nonsmokers-Minnesota, 2395 University Avenue West, Suite 310, St. Paul, Minnesota 55114,USA; jimholte@usinternet.com
Do governments wish to drive young people to other alternatives?

The following quotes will, perhaps, finish this article on a “lighter” note (excuse the pun).

'Is the noble Lord aware that, at the age of 80, there are very few pleasures left to me, but one of them is passive smoking?' Baroness Trumpington, former Tory minister and ex-smoker, in the House of Lords, 01 July 2003

'I DON'T smoke, but I'd rather be with my pals who do than sitting alone in a pub with no people and no atmosphere.' Brian Monteith, Conservative MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Edinburgh Evening News, 9 May 2003

'I DON'T think [smoking] bothers people who work in the [hospitality] industry. That would be like being in the bomb squad and saying you don't like loud noises.' Jim Daley, bar owner, reacts to plans to ban smoking in Buffalo, USA, Buffalo News, 1 April 2003

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