Smoking ban and Smokers

Yes – I have said before this is regional and did so in my post above ” across the some parts of the country”

I am just pointing out two things

1) this is not universal across the country

2) well run pubs who find a good niche will weather this

Edinburgh as a whole has a significantly increasing population and my area is a gentrified old port area

Some of the local places have a no smoking at their outside tables policy as well

In rural Scotland brexit caused huge damage to the pubs as they were used to having a lot of seasonal staff made up of young EU folk on gap years.  Pubs have had to reduce opening hours because they cannot get staff ending up in turning away punters.  I was discussing this with a rural pub manager just the other day.

Falling off a mountain bike has no detrimental impact on anyone else.

Neither does smoking outdoors. But if you’re arguing passive smoking outdoors puts a strain on the NHS, try visiting A&E on a Saturday afternoon? They should rename it the middle class sporting injuries ward.

On Saturday in a car park there was a family with young child in push chair, both parents standing round him smoking.  Unfortunately that child has no choice whether they inhale the passive smoke.

And banning smoking in pub beer gardens is going to stop that how exactly? The kind of person who’s happy smoking around kids in pushchairs is just going to do that anyway. Most people, even smokers (booo, hiss… bastards!) wouldn’t be so inconsiderate and stupid.

As Uncle Jezza is regaling us all with anecdotal pub stories, I was sat in a particularly nice pub beer garden last night. One half of the beer garden had ash trays for the smokers, the other half signs on each table saying ‘no smoking’. Any pub landlord can do this. They can ban smoking altogether on their premises if they like. Most don’t, for obvious reasons

Is it a matter for government to get involved in with legislation? Of course it isn’t

I thought when I saw the proposals that this would just be supported by the type of sanctimonious busybodies who think they should be able to ban anything they don’t like and airily lecture other people on how they should live their lives.

…and so this thread has proved. God spare us from people who think they know best what’s best for us

I’m the very worst thing… a reformed smoker. Having packed in a decade ago I can’t stand the smell of fag smoke. It’s absolutely minging! I can’t believe I used to do it, but if other people want too, while having no actual detrimental effect on others  ( other than upsetting the pearl-clutchers) then let them get on with it

Falling off a mountain bike has no detrimental impact on anyone else.

Ermmm – it really does.  It uses up scarce resources.  Lothian had to get a 4wd ambulance to get people out of Glentress IIRC and there is a significant number of injuries treated at BGH every weekend

Long term of course cycling is very good for health but it does not need to be full on MTBing for that benefit

Just ban it.

Lothian had to get a 4wd ambulance to get people out of Glentress IIRC and there is a significant number of injuries treated at BGH every weekend

I heard the Welsh NHS send doctors to Merthyr Tydfil A&E to get fracture and trauma experience from BPW.  Anecdotal, so I don’t know if it’s true.  BPW also have their own ambulance, treatment room and 3 or 4 first aid responders.  Every time I’ve been there I’ve seen an ambulance and/or mountain rescue team looking to recover a casualty. I expect BPW are coy about he stats for business reasons, but there must be a significant impact on local health services. Albeit at least partly offset by employment and income to the local economy.

I don’t think the impact of MTBers injuries is huge in relation to the total need of the NHS.  But to claim no detriment is wrong

But the question is, is it more of a burden on the NHS than the tsunami of demand for healthcare caused by passive smoking in beer gardens, which unchecked will bring the entire health service to its knees?

heard the Welsh NHS send doctors to Merthyr Tydfil A&E to get fracture and trauma experience from BPW.

Yeah I doubt that very much. Major city hospitals have trauma centres, so a bike park in wales will not provide much experience.

Fair enough Drac, I know you are qualified to say that. I did acknowledge it was anecdotal.

It certainly used to be the case that the number one cause.for absence from work in the Lothian and Borders Fire Service was fractures due to MTB falls (usually at Glentress) :-)

Falling off a mountain bike has no detrimental impact on anyone else.

Neither does smoking outdoors

Now then….

It’s all relative innit?

We’re not talking about Roy Castle performing night after night for years in windowless working mens clubs where everyone is chain smoking.

We’re talking about getting the odd waft of a bit of second hand lambert and butler while sat in a field

Nobody is going to get lung cancer

Smoking needs removing from society… go smoke in your own home if you have to. In this day and age when we all know the dangers, it’s beyond belief that people still take it up. Vaping is another bunch of shit we have to put up with – supposedly to encourage people to stop smoking, it’s now become an epidemic in it’s own right, right down to schoolkids, primary and secondary. Our local McD is overrun with vaping schoolkids at home time. I’d soon get complaints if I went and pissed next to someone’s table while they were eating – same scenario, equally disgusting.  Tired of the stink of both.

Nobody is going to get lung cancer

While that is an issue, my issue is how unpleasant it is to breathe in the smoke.

I, and many others, prefer smoke & vape free.

I can’t stand the smell of fag smoke. It’s absolutely minging!

This is where I’m at. I accept there is next to no risk of me contracting cancer due to someone smoking in a pub garden. It’s just that I want to sit outside in the sun without someone’s fag or vape (potentially even more revolting) smoke drifting around. Give the smokers a nice hermetically sealed room indoors away from the rest of us.

But we haven’t, in fact life expectancy is declining.

I have a sneaky feeling there are a couple of other recentish factors which have contributed to the slowdown in life expectancy improvements.

Weirdly, another one may have been the fallout from a cohort of ageing women smokers – as there was a noticeable bump in women taking up smoking during a period when fewer men were doing it.

I’m a non-smoking asthmatic weakling who doesn’t like sitting in a fug of second-hand smoke, but even I think this is pushing it a bit, and would rather the government expended their energy cutting fossil fuel air pollution, exposure to mould spore via our terrible housing stock, and improving access to respiratory medicine, all of which would have a much greater impact on mortality and quality of life for millions.

Hopefully as we see any health harms of vaping, particularly in the young, start to emerge over the next decade or so, we will move quickly to nip that one in the bud, and save a whole generation from the kind of suffering experienced by their grandparents and parents.

I, and many others, prefer smoke & vape free.

What surprises me is that market forces haven’t sorted this out for themselves.  Or do smokers drink more?

In rural Scotland brexit caused huge damage to the pubs as they were used to having a lot of seasonal staff made up of young EU folk on gap years.  Pubs have had to reduce opening hours because they cannot get staff ending up in turning away punters.  I was discussing this with a rural pub manager just the other day.

Whilst you are at least partly right – a rural pub manager who wanted to solve this could easily find UK temp staff – but they will need to solve the acomodation challenge.   Decades ago places used to provide free or very low cost digs – but the owners realised they could make more money from them as Air BnBs!    Perhaps itinerant EU workers were more willing to live in overpacked squalor.

Interesting to see the correlation between those who are keen on banning smoking but are also in favour of legalising drugs…

Hopefully as we see any health harms of vaping, particularly in the young, start to emerge over the next decade or so

What needs to happen here, quickly, is a review of vape advertising legislation.  Cigarettes are sold in grim-looking packets hidden behind closed doors with minty ones banned now even.  Vape juice is front and centre on the little side counter in supermarkets, all fruit flavours and bright colourful packaging.  I don’t know if the display is empty boxes but if they aren’t it’s only a matter of time before a little kid thinks “ooh, sweeties” and it shouldn’t take a tragedy to get it under control.

I’m all for vaping instead of smoking, not least because it doesn’t cling to you like cigarette smoke does.  I don’t get up the morning after a night out wanting to burn all my clothes because someone on the next table was on the blue raspberry all night.  But it is very obviously targeting the “get them hooked nice and early” market.  Like many people his age, my dad started smoking when he was like 12 or something, I can’t see him being suddenly wooed by a bottle of cherry cola sucked out of a cyberman’s willy.

Its not easy to find temp staff in rural scotland.  Thats a part of the issue – its very seasonable

Interesting to see the correlation between those who are keen on banning smoking but are also in favour of legalising drugs…

Its not illogical to be in favour of both.

Reminds tho of an instance in Canada while I ws there.  There is a completely legal market in cannabis but there was nowhere legal for me to smoke it hardly.  Not in my hotel, not in public parks, not withing 3 m of a doorway or ventilator intake, not outside pubs, not on the beach

What surprises me is that market forces haven’t sorted this out for themselves.

I think it has up here in Scotland – I have a choice of pubs, cafes etc which are indoor and outdoor smoke free.

IInteresting to see the correlation between those who are keen on banning smoking but are also in favour of legalising drugs…

I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m “keen” on banning smoking, but I would support further increasing restrictions which smokers would probably see at the same thing!  I’d also support (or in fact be even keener on) significant restrictions on vapes.  It might seem odd then that I would be generally open to legalisation of other drugs – not to encourage uptake, but to undermine the organised criminals and dealers, generate increased tax revenue, control the quality of the “product” etc.  Whilst removing the criminal association that makes people trapped by drugs also become trapped in the judicial system rather than health system.  Clearly you can’t put it in the hands of “business” though as tabacco and vapes have shown us what happens then.

What surprises me is that market forces haven’t sorted this out for themselves.

this is what seems to have happened at least in part locally to me.  Huge competition with 25 plus eating and drinking establishments with 400m of my flat.  they have had to adapt and attract new crowds to replace the hardened smokers who go out less.  Some of the places have banned smoking on their outdoor tables.

Big demographic change locally but huge changes in the way the bars operate as well in large part

Vapes to help folk stop smoking – great.

Openly advertised and being taken up by kids or by non smokers – a real helth issue for the future.

Its heaving because its moved with the times.  Been a big demographic shift locally as well.  This bar used to be the hookers hangout.

So the pub you’re were in used to be populated by neds and dirty old men and has now been bought out by some trendy hipsters and has benefitted from gentrification in the local area. That’s why it’s popular not because no one smokes.

Government need to act for the greater good and wider benefits to the population.  Health out trumps anything else.

No it doesn’t. If I want to kill myself by smoking, drugs, alcohol, mountain biking or other dangerous sports like skiing and climbing that’s my right and it’s got f*** all to do wiith the govt or handwringing idiots who should mind their own business. Passive smoking in beer gardens harms no one. If non-smokers don’t like the smell they can go to a pub which voluntarily doesn’t allow smoking in beer gardens.

On Saturday in a car park there was a family with young child in push chair, both parents standing round him smoking.  Unfortunately that child has no choice whether they inhale the passive smoke.

And yet it’s perfectly fine for that child to breathe in the pollution from passing vehicles in that car park? Or are you suggesting we ban car parks and cars too? If you’re going to go down the ‘won’t someone please think of the children’ line of argument there are many things that should be banned ahead of smoking a cigarette outside.

Openly advertised and being taken up by kids or by non smokers – a real helth issue for the future.

You can get juice with zero nicotine, it’s basically flavoured steam.

Who, if anyone, uses it I don’t know.  But it’s an option if you want to hang with the kids who think vaping is cool.

So the pub you’re were in used to be populated by neds and dirty old men and has now been bought out by some trendy hipsters and has benefitted from gentrification in the local area. That’s why it’s popular not because no one smokes.

Thats a part of it but also the new punters are being attracted to the bars by the change in ethos and lack of smoking.  Non smoking pubs have attracted a new clientele

Even the trad bars are doing good business

Even the places that ban smoking outside are doing good business.

Its not illogical to be in favour of both.

Yes it is. TJ you know that banning drugs doesn’t work, as you argue in the legalisation of drugs thread you started. What makes you think a ban on smoking will work where banning other drugs hasn’t? All that will happen is a massive black market will be created along with all the crime and associated violence which comes with it.

Even the places that ban smoking outside are doing good business.

And good luck to them. Some pubs though, like my local, would be screwed and that would have a huge negative impact on the community and local economy given all the positive stuff it does.

Banning something just because some people don’t like it is not a justification. There are many people who hate cyclists, should we ban cycling?

Some places like your local would need to adapt to survive – as is both mine and Matts experience.

17% of the population smoke.  Losing them ( and of course it would not be all of them)  creates opportunities to attract the other 83% more

TJ, every other post here you’ve spoken about “adapting” or “finding a niche.”

Care to elaborate on how you mean?

It might be easy for a pub amongst many others in a large city with a vast potential clientele to adapt and find a niche. A lone tenanted pub in a small village being squeezed by the brewery and struggling to survive? Not so much.

Some places like your local would need to adapt to survive

TJ I think you underestimate the fragilty of the pub economy. My local nearly went under when the energy prices spiked. It survived by reducing opening hours and putting up beer prices. Is this what you mean by adapt? My local is a working class pub which has many daytime drinkers and locals who couldn’t afford the sort of prices your averagee hipster craft ale bar charges. This proposed ban is driven by snobbery quite frankly. Middle class wan**** imposing their own preferences on people they think are beneath them. They can **** off quite frankly.

Banning something just because some people don’t like it is not a justification. There are many people who hate cyclists, should we ban cycling

No, because they are just ill informed pricks. People who dislike smoking, on the other hand, are right ;-)

It’s just that I want to sit outside in the sun without someone’s fag or vape (potentially even more revolting) smoke drifting around.

Would you agree that it is fair to say that we are all immune to the smell of the fumes, from the vehicles that have surrounded us for the entirety of our lives ?

those who are keen on banning smoking but are also in favour of legalising drugs…

Thats actually a thing in many of the cannabis cafes in Amsterdam. You can smoke weed there, but not if it is mixed with tobacco

Food

Dog friendly

Music

Regular events

Bigger range of drinks

Unorthodox advertising ( the pub I was in last night has got into various guides and was on netflix)

History of the building / area

Promotions

child friendly

Games available

Sport on TV

Regular tasting nights,

Half price days

Find a niche and concentrate on that – we have trad bars, hipster bars, ones concentrating on food, ones concentrating on a good range of real ales, ones making a big deal of wine, ones with a big range of local gins, ones with board games, ones with themes, ones attracting on price etc etc.

concentrating on the trad customers to the exclusion of all others reduces your market.  the trad bar trade has been in decline for a long time prior to the smoking ban.  concentrating on a declining core market is a recipe for failure.  You need to find new punters

One local pub even had a sewing night

TJ I think you underestimate the fragilty of the pub economy. My local nearly went under when the energy prices spiked. It survived by reducing opening hours and putting up beer prices. Is this what you mean by adapt?

No – thats exactly the opposite of what I mean.  It means widening the clientele you are seeking not narrowing it.  thats a classic wrong response