Ministers can bury their heads in the sand, but the effect of the smoking ban has been devastating

Tuesday March 2, 2010

The government says there is no evidence that the smoking ban has caused the closure of pubs or bars. Patricia Gidlow begs to differ.

This outrageous law has blighted my life. I voted with my feet and watched my social life slowly expire. It didn’t have a huge impact on my working life at first. I used to service fruit machines, pool tables etc in pubs and bars and rarely smoked while I was working on site, needing both hands to work at full speed. I would enjoy a smoke while driving between sites or if delayed on site.

I loved my job. Post ban the income from the machines dropped drastically; the pubs were all empty with the non-smokers and smokers all outside often causing noise problems in their neighbourhoods. I would usually be the only person in the pub and would not be allowed to smoke despite the cold but very fresh air and that was in July.

I’d like to say it got warmer but it never did. And I was having to ask many licensees to pay the shortfall. The same people that used to greet us warmly as you would expect were now fighting for their livelihood.

Suffered

It was the small tenancies that suffered. You know, the REAL pubs. The government thought they were being oh so clever bringing the law in in summer. They thought we wouldn’t really notice and would all be good little girls and boys and give up.

Well, I don’t know one person who gave up smoking because of the ban but lots who gave up going to the pub, smokers and non-smokers alike.

I have smoked for about 40 years and was brought up in a pub. I’ve lived through more than one recession and the local was/should still be the place where you can escape your worries for a while.

Before July 2007 pubs didn’t close down in their hundreds. Since the decline in the popularity of the church the ‘local’ has been the centre of the community, a place to meet where people could drink socially, not booze at home alone.

Exception

I agree with the majority of the legislation. I don’t want to smoke in the supermarket or dentists but for the sake of our heritage and our sanity pubs should have been an exception. It would have been so easy to have smoking pubs and no smoking pubs but we have a puritan at the helm and a Scot to boot. How did that happen? Haven’t the Scots got their own parliament?

I was made redundant last July. I wonder how many other job losses are a direct result of the ban. There’s the licensees, the bar staff, cellar and kitchen staff, cleaners, window cleaners, dray men, deliverers of crisps etc, the sanitary disposal bods, bottled gas deliverers, engineers to fix machines, collectors to empty and upgrade them.

And other suppliers from glasses and optics to janitors’ supplies and drip mats. Not to mention the bar fitters and carpet layers, the decorators and the gardeners. I wonder how many of them are feeling healthier? I am certainly not.