The Smoking Debate: Arse and Ash

Arse and Ash

I read an interesting article in the Guardian that was published yesterday about the smoking ban. New legislation is allowing its grip to further grow and mutate until, as one concerned reader put it, they will eventually begin censoring the internet! First of all, the internet is already censored in many places around the world – please don't bring in the irrelevance of your fears that one day Facebook won't be free into this. Also, people have lived for millennia without the internet and still managed to launch revolutions if that's your concern. And second of all, lots of other pieces of legislation affect our civil liberties but you rarely hear people talk about those rights that have been taken away over a couple of pints at the local put, unless there happens to be a group of us left 'extremists' in there. Smoking seems to touch a nerve like nothing I've ever known.

The new legislation is calling for a ban on smoking in cars where children are present, which people speculate will lead to a complete ban on smoking in privately owned cars. The government has already stopped people from doing lots of things in their cars; making phone calls, texting, drinking alcohol, and from what I understand, lewd behaviour. No one seems to have trouble with these laws – except those that break them obviously, but the general consensus seems to be that these activities can kill on the road. From the debate that carried on at the end of the article, people keep regurgitating the idea that regardless of empirical statistics that suggest smoking, and indeed second hand smoking can kill, there is not hard evidence to suggest that smoking imposes enough of a risk to enforce this breach of civil liberty. I'm sure that lots of people use their phone illegally in cars, drink and text – in fact I've seen people do all those things while driving – and never get caught, never kill anyone, never even come close to causing an accident. But it doesn't make it ok for them to do those things in the eyes of the law, nor the public's. So again, why is smoking any different?

Smokers feel they are under attack. They feel as though the non-smoking world is on their case about it every second of every day. The trouble with smoking is that even most casual smokers eventually go hardcore at some point in their lives. I know plenty of people who can have a couple of drinks and stop. I don't know quite as many people who smoke a couple of cigarettes once or twice a week and not think about smoking the rest of the time.

Well here's the ugly truth, when I was growing up in the nineties everywhere I went there were people smoking. In restaurants, on planes, on transport and my parents were both smokers. My father, at his peak, smoked 80 strong cigarettes a day around me. In fact I don't have many childhood memories where he's wasn't holding a cigarette... Just a few weeks before he passed away earlier this year from CAD (Coronary Artery Disease) he told me that he couldn't muster a 5 minute bath without lighting up while he was soaking. A man that addicted doesn't care about the discomfort and damage that they are inflicting upon their children, let alone anyone else.

I have met considerate smokers – I live with one – and I can't accuse them all of being ignorant but that doesn't change the many people I've encountered over the years who have become so frustrated with everyone else's right to breathable air that they have gone on the offensive at every non-smoker who only wishes for them to refrain from smoking until we've finished our dinner, which incidentally wasn't served with a side of arse-ash smell...

People trying to be 'helpful' have tried to find alternatives to the ban in cars while children are present. My favourite appeared in the main article itself, suggesting that people 'open a window'. He was cut down to size almost immediately by someone making the point that driving on the motorway with the windows down is impractical for obvious reasons. One alternative I can think of is to grant a child the legal right to request that a cigarette be extinguished in their presence. But what parent suffering from nicotine withdrawal will listen to a child? And what child would make a formal complaint against their parents for harming them in a way they can't entirely understand yet.

The biggest problem is that smokers feel this chastisement will continue until smoking is banned from all walks of life. The truth is I think the buck needs to stop in peoples houses. I know lots of people who won't smoke in their own home anyhow, and not just because they have children. Some people smoke but are aware that they are damaging their furniture, stinking up their house and yellowing their walls. That said, I live with a smoker and I don't mind him smoking in the house, if only because the cigarettes he smokes aren't that strong and the thought of him walking in and out of the house constantly is more annoying than putting up with the smoke his roll-ups give off. Sometimes, when a lively conversation is cut short – or I'm left in a restaurant or a bar alone – or someone misses a song we could have shared together – I briefly wish that the smoking ban had never be put in place. And then I remember the smoke, the smell, my eyes and lips stinging and the one time someone burnt my nail polish narrowly missing the skin on my thumb...

And sometimes I feel like it shouldn't stop there... this last year I have had to dodge being burnt by countless cigarettes held by people standing in office door ways, coughed my through clouds of smoke created by people standing at bus stops, put up with people puffing away while I dine al fresco and been attacked by streams of ash and smoke trailing behind people walking in front of me. In fact I even had to change my route home from work to avoid the gauntlet of Smoker Alley outside Farringdon tube.

Perhaps its your right to damage your lungs, stain your teeth and smell like a bonfired pile of arse, just as it is my right not to witness, or smell, or inhale it. The politics of a subject like smoking are clear to see. Politics is organic, and it grows and is shaped by those who are granted power. A law can be instated and it can just as easily be removed. This has happened many times in our two-party system but the truth is, no one is backtracking when it comes to smoking legislation I'm afraid – My advice is get on the winning side, or indeed stay on it, because this is one fight smokers are going to lose.