Pro smoking group calls for exemptions
Pro smoker's lobby group Forest has called for some pubs to be allowed smoking rooms and for private members clubs to be allowed to decide their own smoking policy.
Forest director Simon Clark will make the call for exemptions tonight at its Revolt in Style dinner for 400 guests, including MPs and Peers, hosted by TV chef Antony Worrall Thompson.
"We have lost the battle but we haven't lost the war," said Clark.
"The smoking ban is out of all proportion. We urge the Government to amend the legislation to allow designated smoking rooms in some pubs and allow private clubs to devise a policy on smoking in accordance with their member's wishes.
"Britain is developing into a nanny state. When you leave school you are considered to be an adult. You should be mature enough to make informed choices about eating, drinking, smoking and other activities that give you pleasure but involve a degree of risk.
"Instead, politicians and campaigners are lining up to lecture, harass and insult those of us who choose to smoke a perfectly legal product.
"I don't want to live in a nanny state. I want to live in a mature, tolerant, diverse society where people accept that in order to enjoy the personal freedoms that matter to them, they must be tolerant of other people's freedoms, and that includes the freedom to smoke in some enclosed public places."
Ranald Macdonald, managing director of Boisdale Restaurants and Bars added: "The freedom to choose how we live our lives is being eroded by the insidious tyranny of the super nanny state.
"I believe very strongly that a significant majority of the English population would favour sensible exemptions to allow those who wished to smoke to do so indoors in dignity without affecting others."
