Ireland: Smoking population up since ban
In Ireland last month a piece of news was quietly slipped outthrough the back door that you've probably not heard about. Thenumber of smokers among the population has RISEN significantly since the introduction of the Irish smoking ban.
In 1998 rates were at 33%, smokers having decreased to 27% of the population by 2002. I can't find figures for 2003 but it's reasonable to assume the downward trend continued until thesmoking ban was introduced in 2004.
Since then, according to the Government-commissioned National Health and Lifestyle Survey (SLÁN 2007), the rate has leapt backup to 29%! Now before the antis start bleating "2% ain't a significant rise,innit?", when you consider the previous yearly fall one would expect the rate to be around 21% by now, indicating a potential yawning gap of 8% - a rise created directly as a consequence of the ban.
The reasons for this should be clear to all but the heavily blinkered. Prohibition simply does not work. Never has done, never will. Drive something underground and it becomes seductively attractive. Lifetime non-smokers are trying 'that first cigarette' so they don't feel left out when accompanying their smoking friends - you see this all the time outside pubs.
This has come as something of an embarrassment to Irish govthealth tzars and the likes of ASH-Ireland who are absolutelyfurious. "These figures clearly show that no progress is being made despite the immense success of our smoking legislation", commented Prof Luke Clancy of ASH.
How can ASH declare the ban a 'success' when all it has achieved is to close around a quarter of Ireland's pubs, removed choice and destroyed that certain social mystique the Irish were once free to enjoy?
Despite the spoon-fed official line that the Irish have 'embraced' their ban in truth they are just as pissed off with it as the rest of us. Here's a couple of typical newspaper commentsfrom just the last few days: "Pub licences which once changed hands for hundreds of thousandsof pounds are now as useless as Hospital Sweeps Tickets from the1950s. A social calamity is befalling one of the great staples of Irish life, with worse to come." (Kevin Myers, Irish Independent) "Mickey Martin introduced the ban on smoking in response to a populist lobby demand for it and, in doing so, unwittingly hastened the demise of the country pub and 'the way things were' in rural Ireland." (Editorial, Southern Star).
Like the Irish example smoking Brits have adapted to our ban by partying at home. Those that do go out are spending the firstpart of the evening at home 'pre-loading' on volume-'units' of Asda's finest grog before hitting the town already sozzled. They then spend little cash as they drift between pubs to light up in between.
As most publicans are acutely aware the end result is a big hole in your takings. With pubs closing in frightening numbers it's not much comfort to know that the whole idea is flawed, with the likelihood of increasing numbers in the UK smoking population. Socially devisive and pointless, utterly pointless. When will they learn to just leave us all alone?
