It's time at last to clean up pubs

Morning Advertiser columnist ANDREW JEFFORD has taken up the Union Pub Company's suggestion about contacting the Government's Smokefree Legislation Team... although not with the message it had in mind

Well done, Stephen Oliver, for providing details of the Smokefree Legislation Team in the Morning Advertiser of 7 July, and urging us to contact them. No sooner had I read the Union pubco MD's 'My Shout piece than I did just that to urge the Government to end smoking in all pubs. Here's a simple example of why.

On 6 July, I met my brother at the Jerusalem Tavern in Clerkenwell. He's a great fan of St Peter's Ales (though they weren't on good form that day) and works nearby. I was there early, so I got us one side of a table in an alcove. We set about catching up, making plans, comparing notes all the things you do with your brother in a pub.

After 10 minutes, two girls asked if they could sit on the other side of the table, and of course we made them welcome. No sooner had they sat down than one threw her packet of Marlboro on the table and the other got out her roll-up gear, and over the next 20 minutes there wasn't a moment when one or other wasn't smoking. Did they ask us if we minded? Of course not. Were they even aware that we might mind? Or that their behaviour was spoiling our pleasure? I doubt it. Under present legislation, all the rights lie with the polluter, and none with the victims of that pollution. This is unjust. We'd been first at that table in that alcove, yet after 20 minutes we were the ones who had to give up and go outside to stand on the pavement, losing our seats and exchanging unpleasant cigarette smoke for barely less unpleasant traffic fumes. It was an unhappy experience, and we won't be back. Until that pub is smoke-free.

Smoke polluters are a minority

I don't want to labour the point, but I feel I should remind Stephen that my brother and I represent three-quarters of the British population. The smoke polluters are a minority. Nor am I even against smoking in the right places, which are private places. I love cigars, and if anyone wants to spend a quiet hour with me smoking a couple and discussing the merits of Bolivars as opposed to Romeo y Julietas or robustos compared to coronas, I'm up for it. But not in a pub, where my actions will spoil the pleasure and the health of others.

I find it hard to believe the defeatist negativity with which sensible anti-smoke legislation is being greeted by the pub trade. By far the best solution is to ban it completely, putting every pub and public place instantly in the same frame, and making smokers realise that the era when they could pollute the air for others is over; dead and gone; history. The idea that pubs would empty overnight is ludicrous, since it would imply that a pub is nothing more than a place to smoke in. Would your regulars really prefer to sit miserably at home in front of the telly, ripping the ring-pulls off can after tedious can, eating fat-clogged ready-meals and making their own living room stink of clinging cigarette smoke? Would they be happy to miss out on their friends, miss out on the chat, miss out on the sense of community, miss out on flirting with the barmaid or the barman, miss out on the change of scenery, miss out on the chance to have a meal cooked for them? If they would, you're not running a pub, you're running a morgue.

Anti-smoke legislation, adopted universally, gives every pub a chance to look cleaner, to smell fresher, and to be in every way a more pleasant place, a place where 100% of the English population might enjoy spending an evening rather than just 25%. It is, in other words, a great opportunity for every licensee to increase sales rather than shed them provided every licensee is in the same boat, and everyone who wants to drink in a pub realises that smoking in pubs is finished, just as it is in aeroplanes, buses and offices. That's why I applaud the sensible decision of the Irish, Scots and Welsh authorities.

The worst solution, however, is the one that is being planned in England, since it will pit pub against pub, pub-goer against pub-goer, smoker against non-smoker, drinker against fellow drinker. It muddies and muddles the issue, suggesting that smokers still have the right to pollute the air for non-smokers in some places and under some circumstances. And they don't.

Let's make polluted air history

Stephen Oliver urges the example of people power upon us, citing Live 8 and the Make Poverty History campaign. Right on, Stephen, though to yoke those campaigns with 'smokers' rights is, I hope, something you will later recognise as repulsive. Let's make polluted air history, instead. Let's make cancerous lung tissue history. Let's make stinking pubs history. Let's make bar staff having to take time off with chest infections history. Let's make horrible ash trays history. Let's make nicotine dependence history. Let's, in other words, end smoking in every pub in the land (and not just some of them) as soon as possible.