We are soon to be lucky enough to be granted the kindness of our govt to ensure that while we are killing our livers we will not be killing our lungs at the same time.
In other words our pubs are soon to go smoke free.
What affect has this had on pubs there?
I’m not a regular pub go-er (drinker yes …just not at pubs…enthusiastic amatuer ) but fuck this pisses me off. I fully agree with the rights of our smoke free friends. Though I have yet to see one of them open a smoke free pub.
If a pub is a “smoke friendly” place surely non-smokers have the option not to visit. When this daft law comes in smokers will not be able to chose and pubs are going to have to ensure they have plenty of footpath space available for those popping out for a fag.
Surely we are all adults. We can make the choice to go to a pub where we know people will be smoking or not.
I am going to require a “smokers only , quick exit and re-entry” and while I am re-entering I will feel the need to smirk at those still queueing to get in. I will also feel the need to take my drink out to the footpath with me (won’t that thrill the council), I will feel the need to have the table that me and my smoking mates occupied to be saved for me while I am on the footpath and I shall grumble loudly if it is occupied while I am on the footpath.
I hope our culture changes, really I do. But at the moment many people associate a drink and fag.
Good, as in it’s encouraging people to quit, the air in pubs is a lot cleaner.
Bad, as in every smoker is stuck outside the front door, which is encouraging aggro after 10 pints on a freezing night standing in a small doorway. It also means no there’s no smoke to mask the BO and farts of people in pubs. plus the street in front of pubs is an absolute mess because no establisment provides enough bins.
there has been a drop off in pub going, IMO. More smokers are staying at home, and there aren’t enough non smokers returning to pubs to take their place, which means that the Publicans Cartel will put another price increase onto the pint as justification. Not that they ever needed an excuse anyway.
I liked the smoky pub environment, but seeing as the ban was railroaded in, and there isn’t a chance of the Government rolling it back, there isn’t an awful lot I can do. Not going to the pub isn’t much of an option
This past summer that law went into effect in Florida. Bars that don’t serve any type of food are still smoker friendly but places have a menu and serve food are strictly non-smoking.
I’m a musician and we play in many of these places. The word from various owners is that it’s hurting business. The people who used to complain about the smoke don’t attend any more frequently than they used to and the smokers just go down the road to the place where they can smoke.
That or they inside of the place (where the band is performing) is empty but the sidewalk tables are crammed with people or there’s a dozen or more people standing on the patio smoking.
I understand the rationale but it’s hurting business. When the owners aren’t making money they’re not looking to shell out $$ for live music so my business is suffering too. Not that there are all that many jazz gigs in this town anyway.
I don’t understand the rationale and I fully expect it to hurt businesses. As Twist said some people will be inspired to give up but many will just stay home instead. Is the day coming that the govt wants to monitor how much we smoke at home or if we should smoke at home?
As a fully grown adult living in a democratic country I am not quitting anytime soon. Yes I wish I had never started (and I don’t think you could find many smokers who felt differently), yes I am considerate around non smokers, yes I respect the laws about smoking.
The day any govt has the nads required to make smoking illegal I will quit…till then I demand as many rights as non smokers now enjoy. Simply I Idon’t want to live on the footpath!
These types of laws definitely affect business, just ask bar/pub owners. But fuck them anyway. I think this whole trend of making the government responsible for our health is complete bullshit. The other day, I rented a car and on the window is a huge sticker warning me that cars contain dangerous chemicals known to cause cancer in their paints and plastic parts, etc. Now, this is just getting ridiculous. Cars. Do. Not. Cause. Cancer. And yet there the sticker is. And the only reason it’s there is because if some twat decides to sue the automaker, they could actually have a case if it weren’t for the disclaimer! Does that make any sense?!?! NO!! (feeling a bit like libertarian right now) Why the hell is it someone else’s problem that we surround ourselves with chemicals? Duh! Even if we lived in caves, we’d be endangered by smoke and dust inhalation, human waste, sharp pointy rocks, and so on! LIFE IS INHERENTLY DANGEROUS in a wide spectrum of ways regardless of where you live or your lifestyle or the technology you use or dammit, whether or not you smoke. Perhaps non-US dopers will not really understand why I’m so worked up about this, but in the US right now this sort of thing is totally out of hand. We even have people who the cities pay to look at the sidewalks and determine if they need to be repaired so that people won’t trip over them and sue the city. In my humble opinion, if you’re unlucky enough to trip over the damn sidewalk, tough! It shouldn’t be the city’s reponsibility to make sure you don’t fall down!!! In San Francisco not too long ago, there was a person killed by a falling tree in a park after a heavy rain. In response to public outcry, the city cut the rest of the trees down!! WTF?!?! Cigarette smoking bans are just the tip of the iceberg! Next, they’re coming for your porn! And your wine! And your oven! (Hey, you can’t cook peppercorns in this apartment building! Don’t you know that cooked peppercorns contain trace amounts of toxins? Don’t you dare open that packet of kleenex in here! The plastic contains solvents! Hey! Quit exhaling! Don’t you know that exhaling releases carbon monoxide?)
This have been a test of the emergency rant system. I feel better now, thanks.
quote]Quit exhaling! Don’t you know that exhaling releases carbon monoxide?)
[/quote]
not in any sufficient quantity to affect passive breeders.
Honestly, it’s arguments like this that diminish any validity that pro-smoking arguments have.
Ruadh, we’ve argued this before, and I’m holding off on stating that it has affected business one way or the other in Ireland until we see some research
I live in California. It was quite some time ago that they passed the law to stop smoking in bars/pubs and restaurants in our state.
I think that at first there were alot of angry smokers out there and I think there was a drop in business initially. However, those people got over it and came back. Also, alot of these bars/pubs made some changes to make stepping outside a little more convenient. Such as covered areas where you can bring your drink with you…
I do admit that the law is much easier to deal with in California since the weather is so mild. But all in all, I enjoy it. I do smoke but I also enjoy the smoke free air inside and I really dont mind stepping out for a smoke.
Also, its fun to travel to other places where it is legal… like Las Vegas. So basically the way I see it- it sucks at first but you learn to love it.
Smoking and drinking go hand in hand. Always have, always will. Any barman currently employed knew, at the time of his hiring, that he would be exposed to cigarette smoke. He made the choice. If he decides, after the fact, that he doesn’t want to be exposed to cigarette smoke he can quit and go work in an office. Government nannying is always counter productive.
I don’t mind going outside for a smoke either, (in fact I don’t usually even let people smoke in my house or my car), but I really don’t think this kind of thing ought to be legislated. Where do you draw the line? Must everything be researched to determine at what level it’s “not in any sufficient quantity to affect passive breeders.”??? Then by all means let breeders pay all the taxes that researching, legislating and enforcing all this crap costs. Or, alternatively, passive breeders can choose not to put themselves in that environment. Let people have non-smoking bars, etc. if they want, but to mandate it is too much guv-ment for me. I see nothing wrong with legislating the right of someone to run a non-smoking establishment if they want, but to prevent all others from smoking is too Big Brother for me.
Oh, bull. There are plenty of non-smoking drinkers and non-drinking smokers to completely disprove this statement.
Reminds me of a case I once heard about (no cite, this was ages ago) when a judge turned down the sexual harassment/discrimination claim of a female blue collar worker not because she hadn’t proved her case, but because she knew she was going into a male-dominated field and if she didn’t like boys being boys she should have chosen women’s work. Same backwards logic.
Besides, there are rural places where people have to take the jobs that are there and sometimes for some people this pretty much only includes bars. Not everybody has the luxury of going to work in an office instead.
On preview: Ghanima, nobody is being “prevented from smoking”. They’re just being told to do it outside. Complaining about it is as ridiculous as complaining that you have to use the restrooms instead of just peeing wherever you feel like it.
I’ve had to change pubs. Previously I used to frequent a little old man’s pub, it was smoky and comforting, the drinks were relatively cheap and it didn’t have any music, so you could chat.
Now it smells of wet carpet, urine and BO, you can see the horrendous decor clearly and it has lost it’s clientele, so it’s like drinking in a really badly decorated, smelly barn.
So I go to a trendy place which plays light jazz and costs a fortune, mainly because it doesn’t smell and the decor is nicer. The clientele are smurfs and D4heads though, so it’s less enjoyable all round.
When I was doing an ER rotation in St James last month the waiting room was full of alcoholics covered in nicotine patches and suffering from DTs. Seems they’d all decided to kick their smoking habit, and while they were at it see if they could give up the drink too. Not so good when you’re dependant on it.
The people this ban is affecting most is the auld fellas who just sit in the pub all day and drink and smoke their pensions. They’ve taken all that nicotine and alcohol have thrown at them and they’re still standing, but now their entire social life has been destroyed. Most of them would rather sit and smoke at home, instead of having to stand in a doorway, even if it means losing the only contact they had with their friends, and the only reason they had to leave the house.
Did I say that drinking and smoking were inextricably linked? No. I said that drinking and smoking go hand in hand. Ask anyone who both drinks and smokes and they’ll tell you that when they’re having a drink, they usually feel even more relaxed if they have a cigarette in their hand too. As such, it stands to reason that smoking drinkers are going to want to smoke when they’re in the pub.
There are two flaws with this rejoinder.
[li] The female blue collar worker didn’t know with 100% solid bedrock certainty that the men were going to harass her. People who work in bars know that they’re going to be working in a smoky atmosphere when they fill out their applications.[/li]
[li]Sexual harassment is a deliberate act of vicious objectification. Who is being objectified when a smoker lights up in a bar? No-one. [/li]
Again, Government nannying is always counterproductive. Liberty works better every time.
The obvious solution to this would seem to be for the owners to clean the pub up. If they choose not to, it’s their own fault for losing their customers to pubs that do.
If the ban discourages future Irish auld fellas from turning out like these guys, the country will probably be a better place for it.
Just because you missed the nuance of my statement doesn’t mean you can be insulting
Well no, because sexual harassment is illegal and if it had been an inevitable consequence of her taking the job that she get her ass pinched (or whatever), that would indicate something seriously wrong with that place of work. Such a place of work could only exist in a world where sexual harassment was perfectly legal.
Essentially what you’re saying is “If sexual harassment was legal, then that harassment should therefore have been legal?”
That is the smokers choice. And since bar staff know with absolute certainty that they will be working a smoky atmosphere, it’s their choice too. Let them live with it. That’s what liberty is all about, after all.
How exactly would a ban do that? All it will do is make them more isolated and lonely. But at least the people who chose to work in smoky atmospheres of their own volition wouldn’t have to work in a smoky atmosphere. That makes it all worthwhile.
) but fuck this pisses me off. I fully agree with the rights of our smoke free friends. Though I have yet to see one of them open a smoke free pub.
Not that there are all that many jazz gigs in this town anyway.