The English Smoking Ban of 2007
Created | Updated Feb 25, 2009
A smokefree England ensures a healthier environment,
so everyone can socialise, relax, travel, shop and work
free from secondhand smoke.
– Smokefree England
On 1 July, 2007, a ban on smoking tobacco in any enclosed public space, or in the workplace, was implemented in England, with anyone found breaking it incurring on-the-spot fine of £50. There had been prior warning of this eventuality by the UK Government, and massive advertising campaigns were conducted in order to alert the general public. In fact, much of the United Kingdom had imposed smoking bans beforehand; Scotland in March, 2006 and both Northern Ireland and Wales come April, 2007. So everyone pretty much knew that England was to follow suit shortly after. Even so, there was massive uproar when the smoking ban took effect. But why have a smoking ban in the first place?
Ban the Butt
Smoking bans are brought about, for the most part, with one major reason in mind: health. In England, the Department of Health, together with the National Health Service, began an attack on heart disease in 1997 - under the title of the National Service Framework for Coronary Heart Disease. Research had indicated that smoking was a leading factor in heart disease, one of the major killers in the country due to a high percentage of the population being smokers. In the early 1990s the World Health Organisation reported that the UK had one of the highest mortality rates from heart disease in the world, so action was needed. Later findings showed that in the 1980s 39% of English people were smokers, and while there was a decrease in these numbers by 2005, approximately 25% of the adult population still smoked tobacco:
A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied.
What more can one want?
- Oscar Wilde
In the year 2000, the UK Government White Paper 'Choosing Health' was begun, initiating a comprehensive tobacco control scheme that was piggy-backed onto programmes already in place. These included strategies relating to general well-being, like 5 A DAY, but also those that warned of the dangers of passive smoking and secondhand smoke, and also the NHS smoking cessation advice scheme. Complementary bans helped enforce the planned smoking ban, such as that of stopping tobacco companies advertising, ensuring the addition of 'graphic' warning labels on tobacco products, changing how tobacco products are displayed in shops, and altering the age limits on the purchasing of tobacco products. The smoking ban in 2007 was just one of the strategies, along with all of the above, that would hopefully culminate in the eventual goal of a smokefree England.
Fresh Air
The smoking ban meant that non-smokers in England could enjoy going to pubs without leaving smelling like an ashtray, eat at restaurants without tasting tobacco smoke with their food, and many parents were also thankful of the fact that their young children would not be so readily exposed to the dangers of passive smoking. Public transport would smell reasonably better, and clothes (even the ones on the rack at the store) wouldn't smell like they'd been in a house fire. Action on Smoking and Health UK, the non-smokers, those trying to kick the habit, and many advocates of healthier living were all looking forward to a fresher, and perhaps even cleaner, England:
The ban will be a blow to those of you who like a post-coital cigarette - you will just have to stop having sex in shopping arcades and train stations and do it in the privacy of your own home.
- Shazia Mirza, comedian
However, with the ban came the opposition to it. It was not only many smokers that deplored the actions of the UK Government in enforcing the smoking ban. Many different community groups felt the government had gone too far, and anti-smoking ban organisations quickly sprung up across the country, like 'Smoking Ban Stinks'. There was the belief that the new law was just another action by the UK Government that many labelled as the heralding in of a true 'nanny-state', but also the final nail in the coffin for a national institution - the English Pub.
Time, Gentlemen?
Many pub-going smokers, and some publicans themselves, were dismayed at the smoking ban. Pubs had a particular atmosphere pre-smoking ban, which included the mixed aroma of stale tobacco, beer, pork scratchings and the haze of smoke that hung in a dimly lit room full of people spouting terms like 'guvna' and 'blimey' - not only a tourist attraction, but a way of life. And, as the ban went into action, in one fell swoop all this was gone. The fact that you could have a pint and a fag1 (which went hand-in-hand) at the bar, was to be a thing of the past:
I won't be pushed into a corner by this government. It may tell you to smoke outside but I won't stop... They'll be banning booze in pubs next!
- James Dreyfus, actor
Publicans also had to deal with the fact that a good majority of their clientele smoked, and if these smokers couldn't enjoy tobacco at the pub in comfort, they'd leave the pub to smoke in the privacy of their own home. And drink there too. So, with fewer customers many publicans found they were forced to close their doors, or become more like restaurants - albeit with a bar, and in some cases a play area for kids. But the face (and inside) of the traditional English pub changed forever, perhaps due in part to the smoking ban2.
Popping Outside
With the smoking ban, smokers couldn't smoke inside, whether it be at the pub, or at work. So where did they go? Well, some went back into their own homes and smoked out of the public eye. But many simply went outside. In order to give their smoking clients the opportunity to still enjoy the aforementioned 'pint and fag' without breaking the new law, publicans quickly had to find space for outside smoking shelters, cigarette bins and, due to the invariably cold and wet English weather, outside heating. Expensive, to say the least. And pubs weren't the only places that had to provide this service to ensure the smokers would be catered for.
The front entrances (and back) of pubs, office buildings, hospitals, schools, government buildings - in fact just about any building - were soon conspicuous with smokers. Cigarette butts quickly littered the streets, and just entering a building meant running the gauntlet of the smoking crowds. For many this was not what being 'free from secondhand smoke' was all about. However, some employers, and public service providers, had smoking annexes or shelters built for employers or visitors who smoked, but these were invariably a good trek away from main buildings - and weren't particularly pretty in all honesty. The smoking ban had effectively caused a blot on the landscape in many eyes and, even with the potential health benefits associated with the ban (such as smokers preferring to stay inside and not smoke, rather than brave the elements), the smoke had even clouded the judgement of the new law's supporters somewhat.
The saddest thing that I'd ever seen
Were smokers outside the hospital doors
- lyrics from the band, the Editors
The NHS felt the heat too, and in implementing the smoking ban many hospitals (and in particular psychiatric units) - not unlike pubs - found themselves caught between a rock and a hard place once the ban came into being. Many patients, and their carers, were concerned that not being able to smoke at will would cause harm. Instances of smoking actually being beneficial to patients' recovery were reported too. On some general orthopaedic wards, many smokers felt that the more impetus they had to get up out of bed to have a cigarette helped their determination to get better, quicker3. So, the ban was not without its problems, and critics, even from within the NHS.
The Evil Weed
Some critics of the smoking ban even cited the fact that the Nazi Party had a ban of their own. In 1941, smoking was prohibited in every German university, post office, military hospital and office, due in most part to the work of Karl Astel's 'Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research' - and the support of Adolf Hitler. Thus, as might be concluded by the overly melodramatic, the UK Government was likened to the Nazi Party when the smoking ban was enforced! Perhaps they had forgotten that in 1604, King James I had his work A Counterblaste to Tobacco published, in which he bemoans tobacco as 'a stinking and unsavorie antidot' - so the English king was perhaps one of the first anti-tobacco lobbyists.
Whatever the critics of the ban came up with though, from the loss of the English pub through to the loss of free will, the smokers still wanted to enjoy their 'antidot'. Even with a smoking ban, ways and methods were quickly discovered, with loopholes in the law and the advent of new technologies enabling the modern English smoker to still enjoy a cigarette down the pub, at work, or even at a restaurant. Although it was now illegal to light up a cigarette in a public place, there was no law against using nicotine-based products. Thus, the 'e-cigarette' rapidly found its way onto the market:
When it's freezing outside, and chucking it down with rain, it's a good alternative to going outside for a cigarette.
- Chris Giles, manager of the Butler's Arms in Sutton Coldfield
Shaped not unlike a real cigarette, the electronic cigarette contained a tiny heated element, which when the smoker inhaled upon the end of the tube as they would a cigarette, it activated. A chamber in the e-cigarette held a small amount of liquid nicotine, which then passed over the heated element - in turn altering the liquid into a vapour. This nicotine vapour was thus inhaled, giving the smoker the same satisfaction they would get from a normal cigarette. One added 'bonus' was that the e-cigarette also exhibited a little red glowing tip - so it even looked like you were smoking4. And you could do it inside, blatantly flouting the new law - an idea that appealed to some sections of English society.
The Butt Stops Here
The UK Government had perhaps taken a risk with the 2007 Smoking Ban, with many of the voting public being smokers, or those who sustain a living from smokers and their related practices. In mid-2008, however, research suggested that smoking-related disorders (such as heart disease and lung cancer) would dramatically fall throughout the following ten years, as long as the momentum of the smoking ban continued - and research indicated that the smoking ban also significantly helped many people quit the habit. Regardless of the statistics though, some sense of loss was felt for the change that came about to the traditional pub due to the smoking ban - the 'gastro' pub seemed to be the future of socialising for the new, comparatively smokefree, England. Even so, perhaps the poetry of William Wordsworth was all that inspired the UK Government into enforcing the new law:
This city now doth, like a garment, wear the beauty of the morning; silent bare, ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie open unto the fields and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
