Bad luck of the Irish smoker
Sunday, April 26, 2009 It's just over five years since Ireland introduced a comprehensive public smoking ban. On Monday I will be on the Irish radio station 4FM. It's the latest of many interviews I have done on Irish radio, which highlights the lack of any organised opposition to the war on tobacco in that country.
And that's significant. After all, what happened in Ireland had a huge impact on the UK (starting with Scotland) and if I have any regrets it's the fact that we didn't fight the proposed ban in Ireland when we had a chance.
In 2001 we tried to raise money for an Irish campaign, without success. The importance of Ireland was underestimated by many people. Our focus, at the time, was on London. The Greater London Authority was considering unilateral action on smoking in the capital and it was believed that what happened in London, one of the world's major cities, would have far greater influence on Britain and the rest of the world than what was happening in Ireland.
As it happens, we enjoyed some success with our London campaign. In 2002, following a public consultation that included oral hearings in front of a GLA committee, we helped persuade them not to recommend further restrictions on public smoking, which was quite an achievement.
As for Ireland, it was also suggested that the Irish wouldn't take kindly to people in Britain telling them what to do. I understand that completely, which is why our proposed project would have had an office in Dublin and our spokesmen would have been Irish, just as we have had a succession of Scottish spokesmen in Scotland.
In 2003/04 I made several trips to Ireland, appearing on various radio and television programmes, but by then it was too late. The momentum for change had been allowed to develop with little or no opposition from the consumer. Only the publicans put up a fight - but as I had already discovered, Irish publicans had very little public support.
In 2003 a colleague and I were invited to take part in a debate at University College Dublin. In the course of the evening I was amazed at the open hostility towards publicans. Publicans, it was argued, had enjoyed far too much power and influence in Ireland. (Some members of the Irish parliament were former publicans, and it was suggested that publicans had effectively operated a cartel, keeping the price of alcohol unnecessarily high for years.) The smoking ban, we were told, was an opportunity to take them down a peg or two.
Forty-eight hours before the ban was introduced I was flown by Sky to Dublin in order to appear on a special edition of the Richard Littlejohn Show. It was broadcast live from a bar in the famous Shelbourne Hotel overlooking St Stephen's Green in the centre of Dublin and I sensed then that I was in a minority.
That weekend Dublin was awash with journalists and broadcasters from all over the world. A leading article in the Irish Times talked of Ireland being the centre of world attention, and a lot of people seemed happy with the idea. Ireland, they were told, was "leading the world" in public health. Younger people, especially, seemed to welcome the ban as a symbolic break from "old" Ireland.
Six months later I spent a week visiting pubs and bars from Waterford to Galway and beyond. It was clear, even then, that many of the older, more traditional bars were suffering as a result of the smoking ban.
Pubs that used to open at lunch were now closed. Instead they opened their doors at five o'clock. Staff were finding themselves with less work, or no work at all. I saw how non-smoking customers were spilling outside to be with their friends who had adapted but were still smoking. Some pubs were like morgues inside because so many customers were outside.
A handful of people wanted to fight the ban in Ireland but there was little we could do to help. We didn't have the money. Or the support. I once heard a smoker in Ireland say he was happy with the ban because, lighting up outside, he no longer felt guilty that he was polluting someone else's environment.
True, many Irish pubs were traditionally thick with smoke (the lack of decent ventilation was a much bigger problem in Ireland than the UK), but I wonder what he'll say if and when the authorities go to the next stage and introduce exclusion zones around pubs and bars and he won't even be able to smoke outside.
Only rarely did we encounter any serious expression of revolt. A Galway publican who did rebel (by opening his doors to smokers) was quickly prosecuted and fined heavily. Shortly afterwards, I am told, he sold up and moved to Florida.
On a visit to County Mayo I was told by the sister of a local publican that lock-ins were normal, but no-one was allowed to smoke indoors after hours. The police would turn a blind eye to drinking, but smoking ... well, the penalties were simply too great.
Meanwhile the anti-smoking juggernaut moves on and on 1 July 2009 Ireland will introduce a complete ban on the display of tobacco products at point of sale.
As far as I can tell, Forest is still the only group that consistently defends smokers in Ireland - but our media presence is generally restricted to a handful of commercial radio stations. Politically, if not culturally, smokers in Ireland appear to be invisible. They really need to come out of the closet.
Simon Clark
The interview with 4FM has been postponed until tomorrow. I have been bumped in favour of a big traffic news story!
Reader Comments (8)
Well... they derserved all they got and should not moan about it. No sympapthy from me and no support either, Not for our lot nor any one else who succums to PC brainwashing.More fool them!
I wish they would just hurry up and make tobacco illegal. Because let's be honest, that is where the antis' are heading anyway. Then let's see the authorities deal with real criminals!
I have to agree with everything you say about the smoking situation in Ireland Simon and would like to thank you for all your support on behalf of irish smokers.
And its dispairing that there is no organised opposition like Forest to the smoking ban in ireland. There was one SAD irish outfit a few years ago that I heard of through Forest but when I clicked into it found it was sad by name and sad by nature. A person was only short of having to show their birth cert and other credentials to get into it, then to find it had'nt been updated for a year with anti smoking ads all over their blog. I never used it again.
Ireland is now a very sad place for smokers and the irish people themselves are as much to blame in the frenzied way they adopted the ban without a whimper. They fell for the EU brainwashing spin with the compliance of our inept and toothless pro european polititions, of being 'world leaders' for being the 'first' and of course the inevitable irish characteristic of shooting themselves in the foot, to spite the pub owners in this instance (who incidentally were constantly ratting on each other for breaches of the ban and after hours smoking).
Please keep up the fight Simon for the left behind smokers of Ireland.
I disagree that publicans put up a fight here. They were bought off when the government dropped their plans for continental style cafe bars and special licences for these premises to operate. Publicans feared cafe bars more than the smoking ban and effectively 'backed the wrong horse'.
I also disagree about the lock-ins as everyone knows pubs that allow smoking after time. How could you have a lock-in with the smokers standing outside? The police do not really care and the smoking ban is no longer news. I personally know of premises that have separate upstairs rooms with pool tables where you can take your drink and smoke in peace. The local police must know but they have more important things to do than prosecute a local business for trying to stay afloat.
This country is currently in the throes of a major slump and the government is taxing the average worker to the extreme while removing basic things like child benefit. People cannot afford to go to the pub anyway and even if they could the pubs died when the ban came in and that is widely accepted.
Ultimately, the ban has been accepted but in our usual way we have fudged the issue. Now that it is no longer international news and out health minister is not being feted by the worldwide anti smoking movement, the whole thing has pretty much gone away. If you want to have a smoke with your beer there are places to go and the police turn a blind eye.
The point of sale display ban is another non event to smokers as you can buy your cigarettes in the North for £2 cheaper than the South and on any street corner for less. This trade will only grow and put this country further into debt. Maybe when the country does go bust we might get rid of some of these overpaid quangos and so called charities but until then smokers will remain in the closet smoking smuggled cigarettes in the back rooms of pubs.
My understanding on the smoking ban is that 1,500 out of 10,000 pubs have closed, rural Ireland being hit the most. Enclosed premises is more liberally interpreted, there was one bar I went to in Cork on a football tour which had a hole 3 feet by 2 feet in the roof which counted as "outside." Smoking has gone up from 26% to 31% of the population, and most believe the SHS lies given out by the WHO.
A curates egg if ever I ave seen.
It sounds like a smoker's nightmare in Ireland, but let's face it, does it sound any better here?
It is all very well saying that smokers in Ireland need to come out of the closet (politically) but when are we going to do the same? We don't have any real politicians who have enough guts to stand up for smokers. Labour, it seems, just have a general hatred of smokers, the Conservatives are scared to rock the health boat whilst trying to get back into power, the Lib-Dems, as usual, we don't know where they stand, and the one party that does stand up for smokers, UKIP, has, I am afraid, so little influence, that they make not one iota of difference.
Derek Bennett of UKIP has placed a petition on the UKGOV website calling for the reintroduction of smoking rooms in pubs and bars. The petition has been there for about a week I believe, and there are at this moment, just 198 signatures on it. At least this man is trying, but no one is supporting him! What the hell has happened to the British people when this is the most resistance we can muster?
We are in general, very much like the Irish. I don't mean everyone on here as the proverbial we, I am referring to the British public in general, just as Simon has referred to the Irish general public.
We moan like hell about almost everything, from the weather, to our jobs, or lack of them, to our government, and obviously, the smoking ban. But it never seems to go any further than that. Moan moan moan, but Action? I see little or no evidence of it.
Where other countries take to the streets about things they disagree with, we take to the computer keyboard, and that's about it. Furious of East Barnsley is screaming blue murder about having cigarette displays taken from view, but does Furious of East Barnsley and her pals make up some placards and demonstrate outside local shops, where they would hopefully get their gripe mentioned in at least the local rag? Does she hell, she screams in silence on her keyboard...End of story! And this is exactly what it seems the disgruntled of Ireland are also doing.
Even in Nevada in the USA, home to this ghastly mess in the first place, they are starting to see sense. The Nevada State Senate has voted in favour of easing up on limits the ban imposes. This relates to allowing adults to smoke in bars that serve food.
But here and Ireland? We are like the walking dead, a bunch of zombies, our brains mushed so much by the daily doses of propaganda that is programmed into them, that the majority of Brits really do believe in it.
I stopped at a garage yesterday morning to get some petrol, and the guy in front of me at the till, bought a packet of cigarettes as well. He paid and then returned to the cashier to question the price, to which the cashier explained to him about the new price being relevant to last week's budget increases. After the guy had gone, the cashier started telling me, with a big smile on his face, about how the people don't know what is happening etc, etc, and don't they even realise, he said, that as well as spending all that money, they are also damaging their health at the same time?
Needless to say, I quickly put him right, when I told him to look out his window at all the vehicles outside and all the fuel being pumped into them, and all the fumes belching out of them as they pulled away. Do you think that is a healthier way to spend our money then? I asked. The smile quickly drained from his face, and I did notice a couple of admiring smiles I received from others in the queue at the till as I left.
The reason I am telling you this, is firstly that it made me feel a whole letter better, not just accepting all this type of crap which we are subjected to almost every day, and secondly, because it is what I think we should all be doing. Putting our cases across to the general public not just each other.
Simon says he wonders if the stupid Irishman who said he was happy with the ban now he wasn't polluting someone else's environment, he went onto say he wonders how this same idiot (my word, not Simon's) will feel if and when the authorities go to the next stage and introduce exclusion zones around pubs and bars and he won't even be able to smoke outside.
I'll tell you how Mister Paddy O'Drippity will feel Simon, he will be so incensed that he won't go to his local for over a week, "that'll show 'em won't it!" After that? Well, what was Paddy to do, "I mean, it's inevitable isn't it...it had to come didn't it?"
NO IT DIDN'T Paddy, and no it didn't here either Johnie or Tom, or Sheila or whoever. Wake up and smell the coffee, or better still, wake up and smell the tobacco. If you want the ban overturned or amended, then fight for it, and shout loud as you can to everyone you know. Don't smile inanely at the people who quote the lies and insane "facts". Laugh at them and tell them the real facts. Tell them about the 90 year old smokers that you know who are still alive and kicking, and if and when any more restrictions on our freedoms are brought in, stand up to them straight away. There is strength in numbers, we must all remember that. They will not arrest a group of 100 smokers outside a pub, or in a pub come to that.
I have openly defied the ban since day one, and I have tried my best to encourage others to do the same, not to much success I have to admit, but at least I have put my money where my mouth is, and whatever happens, I can say that I have tried. Now let's all do it.
Hear,hear, hear Peter. One of the good things about blogging is that many people who are pro choice on smoking are doing something about it. I also agree most smokers and principled non smokers need to do more too. I spend a considerable amount of time, researching writing, and meeting people. I estimate 10-20 hours a week and £3,000 a year of my own money. Although chatting to MPs and lobbiests at Boisdale over a very agreeable Merlot in their excellent outdoor smoking terrace is hardly the greatest burden in the struggles.
To be fair I think most people here are motivated, it is the others that need to extract their digits.
The tories, as we know, will take over at the next GE.
Nothing will happen then. It is only then though that people will wake up and see that the main parties are all the same - ie, they are ruled by external global forces and don't give two-hoots about their own citizens and their way of life.
After the next term, we may see things changing. There are far more patriats in this country than those that govern us realise.
People believe that the tories will liberalise us - they can't - and they don't have the will to do so either.