Still tolerant after all these years

It's hard to believe that it is ten years since Scotland banned smoking in every so-called 'public place' in the country. In many ways, the ban opened the floodgates for the endless barrage of anti-smoker policies that followed. Given all the hateful propaganda from the 'public health' racket, combined with the fact that only one in five Britons smoke, it is perhaps impressive that most people would still support a relaxation of the ban, as Taking Liberties reports...

Conducted by Populus, the survey of 1,011 adults living in Scotland found that over half (54 per cent) think pubs and private members’ clubs, including working men’s clubs, should be allowed to provide a well-ventilated designated smoking room to accommodate smokers.

Only two fifths (40 per cent) were opposed to the idea.

A more pessimistic way of looking at this is that two in five people are intolerant bigots, but that is about the ratio I would have guessed from general observation.

The result from FOREST's Populus poll is quite typical of surveys which give people the choice between multiple options. Anti-smoking groups tend to simply ask 'do you approve of the smoking ban?' Nonsmokers will usually say yes to this because the presumed alternative is smoking everywhere. But if you offer people a compromise they will tend to be more liberal.

Towards the end of 2014, the IEA commissioned a ComRes poll of over 4,000 people which included a question in which people were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement: 'Owners of pubs and private members clubs should be allowed to have a private room for people to smoke in if they want to'.

51 per cent of those surveyed said they believed owners of pubs and private members clubs should be allowed to have a private room for people to smoke in, with 35 per cent disagreeing. (Excluding the don't knows, this figure supporting smoking rooms was 59 per cent.)

Way back in 2005, YouGov's Anthony Wells explained...

The simple picture is this - if you conduct polls that ask a straight yes or no question about whether people would approve of a complete smoking ban in pubs, about two-thirds say yes.

If, on the other hand, you ask people what they would like done about smoking in pubs, and give them a list of options such as a complete ban, or making all pubs have a no-smoking area, or better ventilation or so on, then most people opt for making pubs have no smoking sections (or making pubs no smoking with special smoking sections, which amounts to much the same thing) and against having an overall ban

Even after all these years, the same thing applies. The general public still do not, thank God, share the public health lobby's fanatical intolerance, despite that intolerance being enshrined in law.

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