A bad idea spreads: UK proposes near-total ban on smoking in cafes and pubs.

A bad idea? It's a brilliant idea, one of the few brilliant ideas supported by former Norwegian prime minister Dagfinn Høybråten (Christian Peoples Party).

Now I can go to a pub without smelling like an ashtray when I come home. And people working there don't have to worry about the smoke anymore.

I went to pubs in Belgium recently, and it was like returning to Hell. Well, their excellent beer made up for it, of course, so I was still happy, but a bad idea? Hah!

Øyvind

I remember I stopped going out to bars because I hated the way my skin felt afterward and I just wanted to burn my clothes. You're gonna have a hard time convincing me that reining in tons of obnoxious foul-smelling smoke is a bad idea. (Though I suppose separate smoking areas or smoking rooms would be okay).

>> Now I can go to a pub without smelling like an ashtray when I come home.

I hate smoke as much or more than the next guy, but I love liberty more.

Thing is, Gunnar, I love liberty too. I love having the liberty to go out without smelling like smoke. Before the law came I can't think of a single discotheque I could go to without that happening. So my liberty to go was attacked. And if I had been allergic, well, you can just imagine.

I believe smokers have every right to choose to smoke. I smoke myself, at times. I don't see a problem in that I now have to go outside to do it. It's my choice to smoke. I'll take the fresh air of the cold Norwegian winter as a bonus.

Øyvind

Øyvind:

Good for you that you feel that the ban is a good idea. Personally I think it sucks. I'm a non-smoker (except for nice Cuban cigars), but I really liked the smell of smoke at good old "brown" pubs.. and from time to time, I really enjoyed lighting up a cigar.

I can't experience that in Norway anymore. It's banned.

If pubs/bars had to apply for a special licence to be allowed to be a "smoking establishment", that would be fine by me. There would still be places I could light up a cigar and drink a good glass of whisky.

The situation as it is now sucks. In my opinion.

I love having the liberty to go out without smelling like smoke. Before the law came I can't think of a single discotheque I could go to without that happening. So my liberty to go was attacked.

You don't seem to understand liberty. It is the freedom to do what you want with your own property. Do you own the disco? I don't think so. If people really felt strongly about this, the market would provide no-smoking discos and pubs, or at least no-smoking areas. Let the market decide, it's more democratic.

I think most pubs and bars would apply for that special license. So, then it would have to be regulated if you wanted the law to have a real effect. This would lead to unfair competition etc.

I do, however, think that bars and pubs should be allowed to put up smoking rooms for all those of us that like Cuban cigars (isn't that terribly politically uncorrect?). There should be rules saying that these rooms have to be truly separate from the rest of the pub, and that employees should not have to stay in there for an extended time (i.e. if you want to buy a new beer head into the other room).

And, Rune, some of the pubs I've seen to were so filled with smokers that they'll stay brown for many years, yet.

I do understand liberty enough to understand that the market does not always provide it.

>> I do understand liberty enough to understand that the market does not always provide it.

A contradiction in terms.

Free market = X
market = people

substituting, free market = free people = liberty

Like a cpl in recruit training use to say (regarding smoking).

"I don't take my addiction (alcohol) and piss all over you, so why do you smoke in other people's faces?!?"

Yes, but the idea of such a "free market" is utopic. It does not exist. Treating market as a synonym to people will not make it exist. It is simply never going to exist. It's a nice dream, but then the building bricks of ideologies often are.

When every schoolkid is running around with the same brand clothes, it is not because the market is free. It is because the market isn't. As I've mentioned before, Gunnar, if the free market really existed and you made a lemonade superior to Coca-Cola you would be able to win large portions of the market in a relatively short time. We both now that that would not happen in the real world.

The free market has, amongst other things, a tendency to turn into monopolies. This is the reason, I believe, the United States have anti-trust legislation.

Øyvind

Øyvind:

I think most pubs and bars would apply for that special license. So, then it would have to be regulated if you wanted the law to have a real effect. This would lead to unfair competition etc.

I don't think so, not if it's initiated now. Lots of pubs/bars has experienced increased numbers of people visiting them after the ban. Others has experiences decreasing numbers. Those that has experienced decreasing numbers would certainly apply.

I know _many_ young people (well, people my age or a few years younger ;) that hates smoking. I can understand that, and I can understand that those would want to frequent pubs/bars which bans smoking - which probbaly would be all those that has experienced increasing numbers of customers.

I do, however, think that bars and pubs should be allowed to put up smoking rooms for all those of us that like Cuban cigars (isn't that terribly politically uncorrect?). There should be rules saying that these rooms have to be truly separate from the rest of the pub, and that employees should not have to stay in there for an extended time (i.e. if you want to buy a new beer head into the other room).

I can agree with that, as long as I can get myself a good glass of whisky and smoke it at the bar when I drink my whisky.

What I also miss is the option of visiting a nice restaurant, ordering a good meal -- and after the dinner light up a cigar while I drink my cognaq.

And, Rune, some of the pubs I've seen to were so filled with smokers that they'll stay brown for many years, yet.

No, they won't. They're going bankrupt one by one.

The free market has, amongst other things, a tendency to turn into monopolies. This is the reason, I believe, the United States have anti-trust legislation.

Actually, I don't believe that's true. Monopolies are created by a restriction in the free market. When the government starts screwing around with the economy, they interrupt the natural flow of things, and then try to right things again by creating things like anti-trust laws... which, ironically, wouldn't be needed if they'd just keep their hands off to begin with.

In a true free market, a "monopoly" can only exist because the market - that is, the people - allow it. In other words, it's doing a good job. But once it begins price gouging, offering poor quality, or other wise becoming intolerable, business will go to its competitors.

Governments create and prop up monopolies with things like subsidies. The argument that this is "for the public good" is just foolishness, because you have to pretend that there will be no competitors to pick up the slack if Company A is forced to cut jobs or go out of business.

Yes, but the idea of such a "free market" is utopic. It does not exist. Treating market as a synonym to people will not make it exist. It is simply never going to exist. It's a nice dream, but then the building bricks of ideologies often are.

To the extent that perfection doesn't exist, you're right. But so what? So you're logic is since people aren't completely and perfectly free, it's ok to violate the right to liberty? If so, I seriously question your use of logic.

if the free market really existed and you made a lemonade superior to Coca-Cola you would be able to win large portions of the market in a relatively short time. We both now that that would not happen in the real world.

You're really showing the limitation of your viewpoint here. There is no right to a certain result. There is more to success than an alleged superior product, you need superior marketing and execution. Besides, it can and does happen. A couple of years ago, two guys created Snapple. The real point is that the customers ARE FREE TO CHOOSE.

The free market has, amongst other things, a tendency to turn into monopolies. This is the reason, I believe, the United States have anti-trust legislation.

Totally false. I have demonstrated this in another thread, which I don't care to repeat, since you seem to be a lost cause.

Rune wrote: I don't think so, not if it's initiated now. Lots of pubs/bars has experienced increased numbers of people visiting them after the ban.

Good point. I still think smokers room would be a better solution, though. Hmmm... all the brown pubs are going bankrupt? Man! Where are all those people having their beers?

Gunnar:
I guess we're both lost causes. Well, it's a good thing people are different.

Øyvind

Jeff,

Well said !

Jeff:
"In a true free market, a "monopoly" can only exist because the market - that is, the people - allow it. In other words, it's doing a good job. But once it begins price gouging, offering poor quality, or other wise becoming intolerable, usiness will go to its competitors."

By 'true free market' you mean a market that is not restricted in any way by laws right? (of course not removing laws that protect the people)
So you dont think that the possibility exists that a company can become so powerful until people really had not choice but to buy their goods?
How does the patenting work in this manner? If you have a broad broad enough patent, you could actually stop all competition before it is even born.

Gunnar:
"Totally false. I have demonstrated this in another thread, which I don't care to repeat, since you seem to be a lost cause."
You just proved how judgemental your attitude is.

Øyvind: A bad idea? It's a brilliant idea, one of the few brilliant ideas supported by former Norwegian prime minister Dagfinn Høybråten (Christian Peoples Party).

There are two problems with it: The evidence that second hand smoking is dangerous is weak, and there are other ways to protect against it. The first is a question of science. It's just irrational to dedicate so much energy to fighting a habit which is only possibly somewhat harmful. The second is a question of liberty. There's good reason to believe that the primary goal of the anti-smokers is not to protect non-smokers against second hand smoke, for there are many ways to do that, but to encourage smokers to stop harming themselves. That's not something I believe the government should be doing.

When every schoolkid is running around with the same brand clothes, it is not because the market is free.

No, it's because schoolkids are dumb and superficial. But there's a lot more to it than that. A free market isn't about ensuring that the best and most useful products come out on top, (impossible without a central authority deciding what's good and useful), but about providing the opportunity for a small company to invent a superior product (in the eyes of consumers) and sell it. There's still scale and inertia working in favor of the market leader, and a free market does nothing to prevent that. But it does give us something an unfree market does not: Hundreds of thousands of small companies each struggling to create superior products, many of them succeeding well enough to raise our standard of living. It's an algorithm, like evolution or the scientific method, not a code of justice.

smoking = freedom in one's own home, in a public place, smoking = invasion of others' personal space

it might help to come up with a typology of smokers.

cigarette smokers fall into two clear groups with a hazy area in the middle, the extremes are

social smokers: these are folks who might smoke once in a while with friends but not normally alone and who can go long periods (months, years) without smoking

addicted smokers: these people don't smoke for pleasure, they smoke because if they don't, they feel terrible, the need to feed the addiction outweighs any pleasure they get, essentially all addicted smokers began as social smokers

cigars have very little in common with cigarettes and most who partake do so relatively infrequently (more than one a day is, I think, unusual).

unlike many other vices, smoking affects the immediate environment around the person (for a relatively long time) it also tends to reinforce a whole bunch of other bad habits (chiefly littering, since many smokers feel it's okay to throw cigarette butts anywhere they feel like)

so let's look at some factettes:

the less non-smokers are exposed to smoke, the less tolerance they have for it, background smoke has gone from being more or less so universal that no one could smell it [since it was in everybody's lungs] to an irritant and the less the exposure, the more an irritant it is

in bars, addicted smokers tend to drive out other customers since a cloud of second hand smoke is a really awful experience that lasts for the customer until they've changed clothes and showered

bar owners mostly rely on repeat business and the kind the kind of obsessive personality that becomes a 'regular' is probably also an addicted smoker, non-smokers mostly tend to feel the need to drink in public less

smoking/non-smoking sections/rooms in bars don't work as well as they do in restaurants due to the relatively heavier smoke levels, but all in all this is probably the best solution, if I got out to a bar I don't mind small amounts of smoke leaking from somewhere else, it's the heavy, oppressive eye-stinging, skin-clinging kind I dislike

but seriously, curtailing an addictive behavior that invades other peoples' space (and bodies) is hardly persecution (except for the addicted)

«I'll take the fresh air of the cold Norwegian winter as a bonus.» ^^

lol @ Gunnar & his "free market" that has never existed, nowhere. (Ask WTO how the USA market is "free")

Also ask Bill Gates concerning monopoly. (And how he bought the right to continue it with the benediction of the USA's anti-trust court http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_index.htm)

To return at the subject: I'm a smocker, and i respect the right to bar's workers to not to be ill for my "liberty" of being addicted to nicotine.

Btw when will they force manufacturers to reduce nicotine rates in cigarettes? These last were able in the past to make it more addictive (by adding ammonia and others chemicals additives) thus i am sure that they can do the opposite, if only they were forced to.

Best regards,
Sensi

http://www.smh.com.au/ffxImage/urlpicture_id_1077676868633_2004/02/26/hsshakessmoke.jpg

Bjørn Stærk,

the evidence that second hand smoking is dangerous is weak

Since second-hand smoke contains a complex combination of over 4000 chemicals in either particles or gas form many of which are irritants, systemic & reproductive toxicants (hydrogen cyanide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, ammonia, formaldehyde, nicotine, cadmium, carbon monoxide) or carcinogens & mutagens (arsenic, chromium, nitrosamines, benzo(a)pyrene), it would be foolish to maintain that an intake of such things wouldn’t have at least some harmful effect on a healthy person or even fatal to those with asthma or other related respiratory illnesses.

I’m not sure what studies you were looking at, so how about the following??

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1241893.htm

National Health and Medical Research Council: has found important associations between passive smoking and a number of serious illnesses including asthma in children, lower respiratory illness, lung cancer, major coronary conditions and other illnesses.

http://www7.health.gov.au/nhmrc/publications/synopses/ph23syn.htm

Th World Health Organisation has declared (2002) that second-hand smoke causes cancer and that half of all persistent cigarette smokers die from tobacco-related disease. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/06/20/1023864477890.html?oneclick=true

Researchers from the University of Minnesota have found that levels of a tobacco-specific lung carcinogen, NNK, increased markedly in a group of non-smokers who visited a licensed premises where smoking was permitted.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/26/1077676868011.html?oneclick=true

Estimated mortality from secondhand smoke among club, pub, tavern and bar workers in New South Wales, Australia

The Health Consequences of Involuntary Smoking, from the Surgeon General of the US

Dr Mark Eisner, at the University of California San Francisco: “ we found two major things: before the creation of smoke-free workplaces, about two-thirds of bartenders had respiratory symptoms, such as coughing, shortness of breath or wheezing. After the establishment of smoke-free bars, about 59% of those bartenders who had symptoms before, no longer had them. So in other words there is a significant improvement in respiratory symptoms after their workplaces became smoke-free.”

Personally I believe that all those you wish to smoke themselves into an earlier death should do so ;-) free choice and all that. Just so long as they don’t do so at the expense of others. I’d really like my asthmatic sister to die, because of some jack arse with a cigar.

Some other documents worth reading; [weak evidence?]

Otsuka, R., Watanabe, H., Hirata, K. et al 2001, ‘Acute effects of passive smoking on the
coronary circulation in healthy young adults’, JAMA, vol. 286, pp. 436-441.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) 2002, 2001 National Drug Strategy
Household Survey: First Results, AIHW, Canberra.

England, L., Kendrick, J., Gargiullo, P. et al 2001, ‘Measures of maternal tobacco exposure and infant birth weight at term’, American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 153, no. 10, pp. 954-960.

Auspoll survey 2000, commissioned by Philip Morris, cited by Action on Smoking and
Health Australia 2001, Tobacco facts for MPs, ASH Australia, Sydney.

UK Department of Health 1998, Report of the Scientific Committee on Tobacco and Health, UK Department of Health, London.

Whats wrong with your html?
Estimated mortality from secondhand smoke among club, pub, tavern and bar workers in New South Wales, Australia

http://www.cancercouncil.com.au/html/prevention/smoking_tobacco/downloads/barstaff_mortality_report2004.pdf

The Health Consequences of Involuntary Smoking, from the Surgeon General of the US

http://www.nswcc.org.au/editorial.asp?pageid=1394#8

Bjørn:

I think the above reports should be enough to convince most people that passive smoking isn't exactly healthy. You've done good work on digging up researchers that claim otherwise, but this is hardly very disputed today.

Then the only issue left is the issue of liberalism. In my opinion it has little to do with liberalism when smokers like me can force smoke upon non-smokers like you, it also has little to do with liberalism when employers can force employees to work in a smoke-filled environment because of their own economic interests. And we both know, Bjørn, that picking another job isn't always a possibility, no wonder labour unions generally supported the ban.

Some people here like subscribing illusions, one of those illusions is that a free market can and will provide liberty for everyone. It doesn't. That's the reason every country in the world, including the most laizzes-faire-capitalist ones have some legislation to regulate the market. Such legislation can indeed limit liberty, but it can also create more liberty.

There is moralism in this law, it was an idea of the Christian Peoples Party after all.

Such moralism is not a good thing. It could have been avoided by making it possible for bars and other establishments to have separate smoking rooms where people like Rune and me can have a sit, sip at our whisky and quarrel about politics and how to save the world. This is, I believe, something you yourself has also suggested.

As far as I can see, what you call a stupid idea spreading in the UK is an idea limited smoke-ban. You choose to call it near-total, but the fact remains that the UK seems to be doing just what you have called for:

Erik Nord asks us to be creative, to think about solutions that respect the interests of smokers, while achieving all the stated objectives of our new smoking ban. This isn't difficult. All it requires is concern for the well-being of smokers.

Under the proposed British law there will still be bars where it's legal to smoke. If you want to have a beer and a cigarette it will be perfectly possible to go to these bars. Well, that's the idea of the free market, anyway.

Øyvind

By 'true free market' you mean a market that is not restricted in any way by laws right? (of course not removing laws that protect the people)

Yes, right. Even some laws purported to protect people are rather dubious, but there have to be obvious safeguards.

So you dont think that the possibility exists that a company can become so powerful until people really had not choice but to buy their goods?

No, I really don't. Every company that people complain about as being a monopoly here in the States is propped up by government money. Wal-Mart, for example. It's a behemoth, and people gripe to no end about how it's driving local businesses into the ground. However, (a) they usually shop there themselves, and (b) it just received $1 billion in governmental subsidies. Take away subsidies and don't shop there yourself; if enough other people choose not to shop there, Wal-Mart will go away.

How does the patenting work in this manner? If you have a broad broad enough patent, you could actually stop all competition before it is even born.

Most proponents of the free market are against the idea of patents and see them as a restriction on the market. I tend to agree with them. It more or less boils down to, "Anything that limits competition is a bad thing." Patents that lock out competition for years and years certainly do that.

Leif Knutsen has a good post on this.

Øyvind

For those of you who wish to go to a club that will not smoke up your clothes, I suggest you put you money where your nose is and buy your own club. If there are so many of you who do not wish to stink up your world why not get a financial group together and open and sell franchises? Why must you dictate for someone else's investment? AS for the ever pressing problem of your clothes: a) do you not launder them after each wearing, regardless of where you spent your time and b) ever hear of Fabreze?

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