The divine right of smokers
Is it bonkers to ban outdoor smoking?
Keir Starmer is on a collision course with the hospitality industry and political opponents after signalling plans for major curbs on outdoor smoking.
The proposals, not denied by the prime minister, would potentially prohibit tobacco use outside pubs and restaurants, including on pavements. The restrictions would come on top of existing plans to gradually outlaw smoking year by year.
While the latter proposal was devised under Rishi Sunak, the Conservatives argued restrictions on outdoor smoking were about “social control”, with Priti Patel – among those standing to replace Sunak as Tory leader – calling them “beyond stupid”.
Well let’s wait a minute here. Lots of restrictions are about social control, because that’s the whole point. There are things we don’t want people doing to us, so we restrict those things.
What is smoking after all? It’s not any kind of necessity. It’s not something people have to do to live or thrive. It’s rather the opposite – something some people like to do despite the fact that it’s bad for their health.
Ok so it’s a pleasure, an optional pleasure. Other things being equal, of course optional pleasures should not be banned, but in the case of smoking, other things are obviously not equal. Smoking is bad for the people who do it, as well as for the people who don’t.
But maybe there’s some benefit to smoking that balances out the harm it does?
Maybe. What is it? What is that benefit?
Damned if I know. In theory it’s a form of pleasure; people do it because they like it. But it’s a very odd thing to do for pleasure when you think about it. “Let’s inhale some harsh hot smoke!”
Word is that nicotine triggers a pleasure reaction in the brain, and that’s why it’s addictive, but do smokers in general look as if they’re having a really fun time while they’re smoking? Like hell they do. They look about as thrilled as fentanyl addicts do when folded in half at a bus stop.
Smokers keep smoking because it’s addictive, of course. It could be true that they also derive genuine, otherwise unattainable pleasure from it, but the view from outside is the actual pleasure is barely detectable.
In short the plus side isn’t much of a plus. The negative side is very negative indeed. Smoking definitely affects non-participants as well as participants. Nevertheless there is outrage.
The plans were met with despair by the pub industry, which claimed restrictions on outdoor smoking could harm a fragile sector still recovering from Covid. However, health experts backed the idea, while polling showed it had majority support among every demographic and voting group apart from Reform UK supporters.
And pub owners.
The measures would be included in an already-announced tobacco and vapes bill, which intends to gradually make all smoking illegal by prohibiting the sale of tobacco to people born on or after January 2009. When this was announced in July’s king’s speech, it did not mention changes to outdoor smoking.
As public health is devolved, the measures would apply to only England, with the other UK nations deciding if they wanted to follow suit.
Asked about the report during a visit to Paris, Starmer did not deny the plans. “My starting point on this is to remind everybody that over 80,000 people lose their lives every year because of smoking,” he said.
“That is a preventable death, it’s a huge burden on the NHS and, of course, it is a burden on the taxpayer. So, yes, we are going to take decisions in this space, more details will be revealed, but this is a preventable series of deaths and we’ve got to take action to reduce the burden on the NHS and the taxpayer.”
Preventable deaths versus the kind of joy you see in your basic smoker getting a fix.
This is an issue everywhere. In 2014, my employer banned smoking anywhere on campus. Of course the smokers had to work up outrage…the charge was led by a woman who was hauling around an oxygen tank because she had lung cancer, but she growled about how you can’t get lung cancer from just walking by someone smoking, it requires longer exposure. It probably does.
I had no intention of ringing in, but at that point, I had to. Cancer is not the only thing smoking exacerbates – as an asthmatic, even sharing an office with someone who smoked enough that the smoke clung to his clothes was making me sick until they moved him to a different office. It doesn’t take much for some of us.
The world has not ground to a halt because they banned outdoor smoking in all parts of the campus; indoor smoking had been banned for a long time. Things are still going on much like usual, except there is no heavy smoke odor right outside every door that non-smokers have to plow through to get to their car. I suspect the instance of sick leave has gone down.
I remember when banning indoor smoking was going to kill bars. Doesn’t seem to have happened.
When I first went to Spain in 1990, the joke was that there were two sections in the restaurants: smoking and chain smoking. And while you couldn’t smoke on subways, you could in the stations; in the mornings, when the train was pulling in, riders would be standing by the door, cigarette in their mouths and lighter in their hands, and in the time it took them to get off the train, those cigarettes were lit. These days, indoor smoking is mostly banned in Spain, and tobacco consumption has plummeted.
It’s almost as if people respond to policy and messages about the dangers of smoking.
“prohibiting the sale of tobacco to people born on or after January 2009”
It’s going to be pretty funny around 2049 when 50+ English people are making a nice side hustle re-selling cigarettes to the “young” 40-somethings….
I have mixed feelings about all this. I’ve probably smoked about the equivalent of two packs of cigs in my entire life, because I went through a “will occasionally bum one off someone when I’m drunk” phase in my 20s. It just never did anything for me and I was wary of developing a habit anyway.
I do, however, enjoy the occasional cigar, and while there are health risks, it’s nowhere close to cigarettes.
When smoking bans in bars and restaurants were first being implemented in the 1990s, I was opposed on libertarian grounds, but I have to say they’ve been a huge success. I do not miss the days of hanging out in smoky bars and having my clothes and hair smell like smoke (to say nothing of the health issues). Even most smokers I knew agreed that it was better. Bars weren’t willing to go no-smoking on their own for fear of losing customers, but when the government makes them all do it, well, smokers continue to go to bars and just huddle outside for their smoke breaks.
I have two gripes with where things seem to be headed, though. One is that we’re expanding the list of places where people can’t smoke — a lot of rental properties now ban smoking completely, even in outdoor areas. We’re basically saying that unless you can afford to be a homeowner, you’re not allowed to smoke. Two is that these rules are applied incredibly inconsistently, especially when it comes to pot smokers/vapers, who feel free to take a hit whenever and wherever they please.
Reminded me of this classic Bob Newhart piece:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1KbtLrBZ0k
This statement from Starmer is a good example of a lack of joined-up thinking:
Smoking-caused diseases tend to kill people around pensionable age. That means that smokers pay their taxes all their working life, and indeed pay a lot more tax for tobacco products, but then they save the taxpayer a lot of money by dying early, in late-middle-age or early retirement. Yes, that illness costs the NHS, but suppose they didn’t die of it, what happens? They then get older (while being paid pensions) and that costs the NHS even more since health-care costs rise rapidly with age, and since they’ll likely die of something eventually, they don’t save the NHS the cost of whatever illness kills them. And they don’t require care-home costs that can also cost the taxpayer a packet.
When one factors in everything, it’s not smokers (who tend to die soon after their working/tax-paying life) who cost the taxpayer, it’s those who live for decades after retiring, especially if they end up in a care home.
Now if Starmer wants to ban smoking based on telling people what is good for them then that’s a whole other debate, or if you want to ban it from pavements outside pubs owing to annoyance to non-smokers then fine, that’s ok with me, but one can’t justify this owing to costs to taxpayers.
Re iknklast @1,
My grandfather was a heavy smoker until the mill he managed went under when the owner absconded with the money. He quit then, and lived to his mid-eighties, but he suffered from emphysema the last few years of his life and spent much of his time hooked up to a breathing machine in the ground floor of his house. That was a major reason I never took up smoking–I knew what it was like to struggle for breath, and the prospect of living like that without any real relief scared me more than the possibility of an early death.
This actually isn’t as unfair as it seems; a smoker pays higher insurance rates than a non-smoker. The insurance on the property is usually paid by the owner, not the renter. The risks are higher, so the cost is higher.
WaM:
I’ve been out of control on my asthma for some time now, and doctors are concerned. I hate to imagine what it would be like if I smoked, or lived with a smoker!
My dad smoked a long time, too, and never had a problem from it. He was also an alcoholic, and his teetotaler brother got cirrhosis – non-alcoholic cirrhosis – while my dad never suffered any consequences, other than one bad car wreck in his thirties.
So many people can come up with those stories, and they think they are killers. They aren’t, because the law of averages suggests that some smokers would have few problems, and we would likely know at least one. It sounds like you had a different experience. In spite of the fact that I never saw my dad suffer from it, I never had the urge to take up smoking, though my sister tried to start me on it when I was sixteen. Never was interested.
I think this is because it’s not only addictive, it’s one of the most addictive drugs known. Most of the nicotine addicted I have been around can’t stop for long before noticeable withdrawl symptoms set in, so they aren’t doing it for the joy of it, they’re warding off the crash.
Coel –
But he did talk about what’s good for people. Even in the tiny excerpt I quoted, he did that. The taxpayers bit was just one part of what he’s quoted as saying, which of course is not the sum total of what he has said on the subject.
@Coel – this argument has been hashed and rehashed for decades. Not every smoker gets lung cancer, not all lung cancers are caused by smoking, nor is lung cancer the only cancer or ailment that can be caused by smoking.
You may as well make the same argument that we should have kept lead in petrol, use blue asbestos to line our walls, and eliminate all occupational health and safety rules since every death “saves” money.
—————
In South Australia, smoking is banned in all indoor areas, in any area where food is being served (eg outdoor tables), and within 5 metres of a building entrance. Universities and Hospitals have a total prohibition on smoking anywhere on their grounds.
And the world still turns,
Screechy @ 3 –
Not any more, at least not here. The King County buses have a recorded message saying “WE SAID NO VAPING” [rough translation] as needed. I was on such a bus the other day and I had just clocked the faint smell when the message said its piece. The driver was of course farther away from the vaper than I was but switched that thing on in a heartbeat.
Having grown up back when smoking was cool and practically everyone did it, I’m happy not to have to smell it everywhere. I remember being stuck in vehicles in the rain with smokers, or living in houses with it, or one time, being in a restaurant so thick with cigarette smoke thay my eyes burned. I don’t mind the occasional whiff of cigar or pipe tobacco (at a distance), or even pot, but cigarette smoke is acrid. In fact when I see the word acrid I think of cigarette smoke.
OB,
Yes, in theory those rules apply to pot, but in my experience they never suffer any consequences. It’s partly due to the way they’re used. A cigarette smoker wants to take multiple drags off their cigarette and preferably finish the whole thing — they kind of need a few minutes of uninterrupted smoking time. Having a bus driver or other person in charge come by and make them put it out is a real annoyance to them and a deterrent, and they can’t enjoy their habit discretely. But a pot smoker can just pull their pipe or pen out of their pocket, take one long drag off it, and then stick it back in their pocket and look innocent if anyone complains about the pungent cloud. And at that point the deed is done and they don’t really care if the driver says “now don’t do it again.” Or are your drivers willing to kick riders off for it?
(To be fair, this is also why pot smoke is less annoying — it tends not to involve a long exposure.)
Coel, again [it can be tricky to cover it all in one reply] –
So the only relevant consequence of early death is monetary?
What about the fact that those people might have enjoyed another 5 or 10 or 20 years of life? What about the fact that their friends and relations might have? What about their possible talents wasted early?
Screechy, I don’t know, but don’t vapers generally huff for some time, like smokers? I’m not sure, because I haven’t experienced it all that often, but the message seems to motivate them to put it away until they hop off the bus.
The drivers aren’t motivated to kick them off but security guards are, and I do see them on the bus I’m on now and then. I think that’s mostly because of the fentanyl crisis, which is really horrific here.
One big reason rental properties (ranging from apartments to hotels) are banning indoor smoking is that smoking costs them money. Smoking apartments require extensive cleaning after they’ve been vacated to get rid of the smell that bakes into the walls. And heavy smokers will also ‘share’ their habit with adjacent apartments in all but the newest and best-maintained buildings. So you have to make an entire wing of apartments ‘smoking’ or ‘non-smoking’.
Coel: On the issue of diseases, since you unsurprisingly see things only through a profit/loss analysis, you fail to comprehend that most of the ailments associated with smoking (emphysema, asthma and various cancers) are ‘wasting’ illnesses. Their victims often linger, while undergoing ever more expensive interventions, for years (if not decades). These are massively more expensive forms of death than a quick one-and-done stroke or heart attack several years later.
@Coel:
As others have pointed out, this argument has been bashed around for a long time. But it’s also false, because we’re actually pretty good at keeping people alive but unwell. A lot of smokers may keel over at a younger-than-average age; but a lot don’t, and a lot of those that don’t will sooner or later rely on medical care that is a lot more expensive than that normally provided for the elderly: emphysema, heart attacks, COPD, cancer, and all the rest of it don’t come cheap. Those costs don’t diminish: people don’t get better. At best, they get worse really, really slowly. And really, really expensively.
(Ah: I see that Freemage just made the same comment.)
Honestly it’s kind of hilarious, in a horrible way, to argue that smoking is a social good because smokers “save the taxpayer a lot of money by dying early.” Why not just euthanize the same percentage of people instead?
I believe, but can’t support off hand, that the percentage of people who try smoking and become seriously addicted is much, much higher than the same percentage for heroin users. In my acquaintance, a sample of some hundreds, cigarette addiction is the most difficult to stop. The long term withdrawal symptoms may not be as dramatic as delirium tremens or the ‘Oakland flu,’ but they last much longer.
So, the short-term distress of the addicts will lead them to a lot of defiance and resistance. Enough to generate a criminal underworld of tobacco bootleggers?
#2 What a Maroon
At about the same time as that, I was in the airport in Madrid, and was very tempted to take a photograph of a guardia civil (policeman) standing smoking under a No Smoking sign. However, I didn’t. Spain has advanced tremendously in 40 years and I don’t think one would see that today.
#17 Enzyme
None of my business, so don’t answer if you don’t wish, but why do you post as “Enzyme”? Is it possible that we know one another in real life. I started working on enzymes in about 1964 and did so in one way or another for the rest of my career.
Athel,
Yes, that wouldn’t have surprised me 30 years ago, but it would today.
And it’s just as well you didn’t take a photo–they can be touchy about that.
@Ophelia:
No of course not!. My comment was narrowly and specifically about the saving-the-taxpayer-money justification that Starmer gave for his policy. It was explicitly not about other arguments for that policy.
Why, yes, indeed! Again, my comment was only about the specific sentence by Starmer that I quoted.
But, while many will readily accept legislation that is necessary to save the NHS and the taxpayer money, legislating for adults to tell them what is good for them is not so generally accepted. After all, anyone who wants the benefits you’ve outlined can simply not smoke.
@Freemage:
No I do not!. Sheesh, I mean, I *explicitly* pointed to other considerations (last paragraph of my first comment).
OK, if you want to refute me, please point to a study that shows that a smoker generally costs the taxpayer more than a non-smoker, once you’ve factored in everything including pensions, medical costs of the very elderly, care-home costs, revenue from tobacco taxes, etc.
That’s a serious request by the way, I’m happy to be corrected by proper data.
@Rev David Brindley:
No, not at all. What an utterly muddled reply. For example, lead in petrol harmed children’s brains, affecting them throughout their lifetime. Asbestos exposure is generally not voluntary. Etc.
No, every death does not save money. I mean, sheesh.
But, let’s consider a policy of shooting dead every 70-yr-old. Now that *would* save the NHS money and save the taxpayer money. Obviously it would.
But that doesn’t mean we should shoot every 70-yr-old, because — and this may shock some people — there are also other considerations besides money!
But properly considering such issues is necessary for clarity about ones reasons for doing something!
@The thread:
This is from 2015 on the Full Fact site:
“Do taxes on cigarettes bring in enough revenue to cover what smoking costs the government?
“We know they bring in about £12 billion in direct tax revenues, …
“Estimates suggest costs anywhere between £3 billion and £6 billion for NHS treatments in a given year. In the longer term the total cost might be lower, since some of those who die prematurely due to smoking might otherwise have gone on to cost the service even more money due to other health conditions.
“This is even more uncertain an estimate since it’s based on estimating lost economic output from workers dying early from smoking-related conditions (£4 billion) and even taking smoking breaks at work (£2.9 billion).”
“As in the case of NHS costs, the net effect on the public purse might be smaller in the longer term. People dying earlier can reduce the state’s spending on social care and pensions.”
@The thread:
The above site also says: “… although some research has suggested non-smokers have greater healthcare costs over time.”
That links to this study in the NEJM, “The Health Care Costs of Smoking”, which says:
“Conclusions: If people stopped smoking, there would be a savings in health care costs, but only in the short term. Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs.”
Upshot: if you want to argue for a ban on smoking then there are lots of good arguments you can use, but I’m sticking to my claim that reducing the burden on the NHS and the taxpayer is not one of them.
Smoking may be a voluntary activity, but it is not voluntary when you are exposed to second-hand smoke. If I were in a country that had a decent health care system, I would have cost them significantly more when I was surrounded by smokers than I do now that smoking has been banned in most places. Meanwhile, people can smoke in their homes and their cars.
I agree that the costs of smokers on the taxpayer isn’t a good argument. I also think that the cost of being 70 and on Social Security (or whatever the equivalent is in the UK) isn’t a good argument for shooting people over 70.
What I do think is that in all of this, the non-smoker often is given short shrift, when in reality, that is the only legitimate argument for banning smoking. We must be careful about what personal behaviors we restrict (see the later post on hijab policing in Germany and all the awful shit happening around transgenderism). When those activities have the potential to harm others, then we should not only be willing, but obligated, to control the practice in public. Thanks to the refusal of our governments to ban smoking in public office buildings until the late mid to late 1980s, I am likely to be going on oxygen soon, as the damage to my lungs I suffered during that time has been slowly killing me. This argument is, and should be, the best, the only argument needed to initiate such a ban. The problem is, the economic one is often the only one many people will listen to.
If the US can ban public smoking in so many places, I would think other countries should be able to do so. It probably helps, though, that smoking in the US is way down, thanks to the health appeals over the last several decades.
Second hand smoke (cigarette, pipe, marijuana, etc) is not harmless. It consists of the products of incomplete combustion of plant matter. It contains particulates, vapors, and gasses (eg carbon monoxide). We know about some of the harms of particulates from the study of air polution.
I would be suprised if second hand smoke did not have negative effects on children’s development, especially the chronic exposure they would get from living with a parent/guardian who smokes. And what about the effects of nicotine in second hand cigarette smoke on children.