Report to the People
27th March 2006
Stubbed Out
It’s
been much discussed and argued over. And now it’s finally happened.
Yesterday,
the ban on smoking in public places came into effect.
Smoking
in any “wholly or substantially enclosed” public place is now against the
law. This includes pubs, clubs,
restaurants, offices, shops and more. The
lawyers have had a field day drafting the precise legal definition, but, as a
rough rule, any room not in someone’s home (or what is effectively their home,
a long-stay psychiatric unit for example) is non-smoking.
The
biggest winners are workers in the hospitality industry, who no longer need to
work their shifts in a smoke-filled atmosphere. Bar and waiting staff shouldn’t be exempt from the
workplace protection everyone else takes for granted - a fact which overcame my
original scepticism about the ban.
We
can’t, though, just move smokers from the lounge bar to their lounge at home,
surrounded by their children. The
new smoke-free laws must go hand-in-hand with better efforts to reduce the
number of people who smoke. That
means high quality, accessible smoking cessation services, targeted at those who
are not normally reached by health promotion campaigns. It
also means, as evidence from elsewhere shows, stopping the next generation
picking up the suicidal habit by raising the minimum purchasing age for tobacco
from 16 to 18.
The
new smoke-free laws have to be just one weapon in our fight against poor public
health in places like Greenock. Otherwise
they’ll only be another piece of well-intentioned health and safety
legislation.
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