Hamish Champ: Ironically, belligerent smokers are helping to close pubs

I read some of the comments appended to Pete Robinson's recent blog on minimum pricing and Chris Maclean's latest thoughts on the smoking ban with interest that bordered on incredulity.

I was particularly taken with one commentator who said she used to frequent her local pub four nights a week but now, since the smoking ban, didn't visit it anymore.

"I know when I'm not wanted," she added, as if the licensee had made a particular point of singling her out and shouting, a la​ Norman Balon: "You're barred!"

There are a number of things about this sort of attitude that really get my goat. And the following views are aimed more at punters than publicans and they are my​ views, and not those of The Publican​.

First, boycotting pubs because they won't - can't - let you smoke in them is the biggest example of cutting off your nose to spite your face I've ever come across.

Ironically many smokers who say they'll never visit their local pub again because of the ban are among the first to moan about the number of pubs closing down. Has it never occured to them that... no, I don't suppose they've put two and two together on that one.

In such cases of smoker belliegerence the people who lose out most are licensees, and especially those who are trying to make the experience in their pub a bit better for all their customers.

Those pub customers who want to smoke can generally still do so. OK, not inside, but where they can pubs will provide facilities for smokers.

Thousands of licensees have stumped up shed-loads of money to give the puffers among their customer base the space to puff away. If such facilities exist in your local pub why not use them?

And please, don't roll out the usual "second-class citizen" stuff. Pubs, like any other public enclosed space, have to conform to the law. They didn't bring in the smoking ban; the government did.

And I'm with Chris Maclean in believing that the ban will be here in a year's time, probably a decade's time too.

You want the law changed? Lobby your MP. But I doubt anyone, even Cameron's Tory party, will seek to repeal the law.

As for separate smoking rooms with adequate ventilation, sure, maybe​ it'll get a look in some day. But would it be guaranteed to bring the smokers flooding back?

Meanwhile, the suggestion that pubs don't want the custom of smokers is as ludicrous as it is wide of the mark. Pubs, like anywhere else, just have to play by the rules.

Yes, the ban's a pain in the arse for quite a lot of people - such as the friend of mine who sat outside the pub we were in on Saturday so's she could indulge her habit - and I know lots of non-smokers who argue the point about freedom, liberty, the rights of man, blah, blah, blah, etc.

But the ban's been with us all for at least two years now. Can't we just get on with it?

Now, if you want to have a go at anyone you might want to train your (f)ire on the supermarkets' approach to alcohol retailing. I'd man the barricades with you on that one...