The ban and the Beeb

A very busy day of smoking ban-related items at the BBC yesterday, evidently inspired by the Dutch rolling back its smoking ban. Belinda has the run-down and sound clips at F2C Scotland.

Nicky Campbell had a spirit-sapping phone-in on Radio 5 (all phone-ins are spirit-sapping). The usual suspects called up: people who gave up smoking and think everyone else should too, people who believe that bar-workers have no choice but to work in pubs, people asking why we don't ban drinking as well, etc. etc.

Points of interest included Rosemary Gillespie from the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation twice refusing to answer the question of whether Roy Castle smoked. Since the whole organisation is built on the idea that he got lung cancer despite not smoking, this is hardly a intrusive line of enquiry and her silence does make me wonder.

And a call from a gentleman who is happy that he can now enjoy a smokefree pint of real ale (CAMRA member?) crystallised the inherent snobbery and contemptuousness of the whole public health movement:

"Can I just say, quite a lot of the pubs that have closed down, to be honest I'm quite grateful they have. I think they were the most awful places which were actually just big smoking dens and had the most dubious clientele in them and they were just asking to be closed down."

I also find it very hypocritical for Cecilia Farren to talk (on Radio 4) about the "vested interests of the tobacco industry" when she is the director of GASP (UK). Aside from the fact that the tobacco industry had no hand in the grass-roots Dutch campaign, GASP is not just any ordinary anti-smoking group. It's not a volunteers' group, of course—hardly any of them are—but it is more explicitly commercial than most. It is a limited company that sells no-smoking paraphernalia and is therefore dependent on smoking bans for much of its business. Aren't conflicts of interests like that worth mentioning?

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Nick Hogan jailed for 6 months

Nick Hogan has become the first person in Britain—and one of the first in the world—to be imprisoned for taking a stand against the smoking ban. He has been given a six month prison sentence for non-payment of a £10,000 fine. His crime was allowing people to smoke on his own property.

Both the fine and the prison sentence are completely disproportionate to the offence but it has been clear from the outset that the authorities intended to make an example of Hogan. The offence itself—"allowing people to smoke"—is absurd and has no place in a civilised society; the state has no right to force individuals to act as policemen.

The excessive fine of £3,000 was bolstered by ludicrously high court costs and further penalties. In my view, Hogan was right to refuse to pay it. In taking a stand he may have expected some sort of custodial sentence. Nobody could have expected a sentence of six months. A quick Google search shows us what company Nick Hogan has been placed amongst...

Two months

Brighton woman jailed after campaign of violence

A woman who carried out a campaign of violence and intimidation against council tenants has been jailed. Shirley Miles, 45, has been given a two-month prison sentence for anti-social behaviour.

During her terror campaign at a number of council properties in Kemp Town, Brighton, Miles abused two vulnerable tenants, using a razor blade toattack and cut a tenant's face and body.

She also caused criminal damage to council property and stole property and money.

Three months

Dungiven man jailed for three months

A Dungiven man convicted of sexual offences has been sent to jail for three months and ordered to sign the Sex Offenders' Register for seven years.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was convicted of gross indecency with a child and indecent assault on a female.

Four months

Merseyside teenager jailed for four months for 'despicable and horrendous' animal cruelty

A MERSEYSIDE teenager was sent to jail for four months for setting dogs on defenceless animals and filming them being ripped to pieces.

Six months

Baby beater jailed for six months

A man who was caught on camera repeatedly punching a friend's sleeping baby has been jailed for six months.

Hogan's 'crime' was, above all, a political protest so perhaps it would be better to compare his sentence against other political protesters. Like Greenpeace, for example, who cause criminal damage and yet are still acquitted:

Not guilty: the Greenpeace activists who used climate change as a legal defence

Six Greenpeace climate change activists have been cleared of causing £30,000 of criminal damage at a coal-fired power station in a verdict that is expected to embarrass the government and lead to more direct action protests against energy companies.

Note that these people admitted to causing £30,000 worth of damage. Despite being manifestly guilty, they were acquitted because their defence was, effectively, that global warming was sufficient provocation.

This is not a unique case. Take this one from 2001...

Trident protesters found not guilty

Two anti-nuclear protesters who entered a dockyard planning to disarm one of Britain's Trident submarines with an axe were yesterday cleared of conspiracy to cause criminal damage.

Sylvia Boyes, 57, from Keighley, West Yorkshire, and River - formerly Keith Wright - 45, from Manchester, admitted that they plotted to damage HMS Vengeance while it was docked at Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, in November 1999.

But they denied criminal damage, claiming their actions were justifed because nuclear weapons were immoral and illegal under international law. They argued politicians could not be trusted with Britain's nuclear arsenal, so civilians had to act to stop disaster.

Or this from 1996...

£1.5m Hawk attack women freed

Four women walked free from Liverpool Crown Court yesterday after a jury found them not guilty of criminal charges despite their admission that they did more than pounds 1.5m worth of damage to a Hawk warplane.

They broke into hangar 358 and used hammers to damage the plane in 25 places. All four claimed their actions were justified because the Hawk was destined for Indonesia, where it would be used against the civilians of East Timor.

The three cases above involved a jury trial, something that Hogan was not afforded. The disgraceful treatment dished out to a decent man who has caused no harm to anybody is further proof that the idea of equality before the law is a dead concept in Britain. If you have a politically correct excuse for your crimes, you are set free. If not, you are thrown to the dogs.

Leg-Iron has more on this.

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Smoking in New York

Today's issue of The New York Times contains an article about the widespread flouting of Bloomberg's smoking ban. In short, if you you've got the money to go to a half-decent night-club, you're not going to have a problem smoking.

In November, Eater.com called it “the worst kept secret in New York nightlife” that “smoking is now allowed in numerous nightspots, specifically just about any and every lounge and club with a doorman and a rope.”

It's not just New York, of course. I mentioned the growing disobedience of French smokers a few days ago. Until it changed hands recently, my local snooker club routinely turned a blind eye to smoking on the premises. Recently, I stayed in a pub (picked at random) when visiting relatives and found that the curtains closed and the ashtrays came out on the dot of 11pm every night. Similar anecdotal evidence is abundant.

So while it's not just a New York phenomenon, that city has had longer than most to get used to the legislation. The theory is that resistance to smoking bans should fade over time. Seven years after the smoking ban came in, it seems that the opposite is happening. That really should be no surprise - it's what's happened throughout history. 

Smoking bans were popular a century ago but were all repealed by the late 1920s, according to Christopher Snowdon, the author of Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking. Most bans meet the same fate, Mr. Snowdon said: “They usually end with the same kind of passive resistance you see here.”

“It's just the fact that you have a habit that won’t go away,” he added.

New York has a long and chequered history of anti-smoking measures. Its first smoking ban was back in 1620 when it was still known as New Amsterdam. In the 1900s, it was the home of the Nonsmokers' Protective League. Before the First World War, it banned smoking on public transport and banned women from smoking in public buildings. The 2003 smoking ban was just the latest in a string of failed tobacco control measures. 

Today's New York Times article may lead to a crack-down on these night spots in the short-term. In the long term, history suggests that Bloomberg and his health department enforcers have their work cut out.

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The French resistance

"The French will never stand for it" they said when France brought in a smoking ban in 2007. This view echoed the "New Yorkers will never stand for it" and "the Irish will never stand for it" of previous years. It is a paradox often remarked upon that it was the very people who had the greatest reputation for being rebels, free spirits or plain stubborn who were also the first to embrace, or at least tolerate, total smoking bans.

If you'd have said the Croats, Germans or the Dutch wouldn't stand for it, you'd have been right. Smoking bans there were watered down or abandoned after public protests and lawsuits. Across most of the rest of Europe, smoking bans had enough exemptions to accommodate smokers in the first place. The comprehensive, zero exemption smoking ban is, as I have said before, almost uniquely associated with the English speaking world. The one notable exception is France.

I haven't been to France since they brought in their ban. I have witnessed at first hand the smoking ban being overtly flouted in England and America. I have heard that New York has many places where the ban is ignored. I believe many pubs in Ireland bring out the ash trays after hours. But I have heard that the French have complied willingly.

This compliance, it seems, is no more. The French may not have rebelled at first, but it was always in the post. Compare and contrast these reports from Time magazine. The first is from February 2007, the second from the current edition:

No (Revolutionary) Fire as France Curbs Smoke

Anyone expecting a great national rebellion bringing millions of irascible Gauloise-puffing Gauls to the barricades in defiance of authority and good sense will have been disappointed: France's nearly 15 million smokers meekly complied with the Feb. 1 law obliging them to haul their (cigarette) butts outside if they want to light up, or risk a hefty fine should they continue smoking in enclosed spaces. In fact, that relatively docile compliance with a liberty-restricting measure represented as significant a revolution in French cultural attitudes as does the state's health-driven campaign against tobacco.

"It's a pain, but that's the law, and the bosses are applying it," says a 34 year-old supermarket employee named Christophe who declined to give his last name as he paced the sidewalk for his smoke. Before the ban, Christophe says he and fellow inhalers were allowed to smoke in the large storage room in the central-Paris supermarket. "Now we can't and we're out here," he says, shrugging between drags. "That's life."

Smoking Ban? The French Light Up Again in Public

When France outlawed smoking in public places three years ago, residents took the news remarkably — almost shockingly — well. Almost overnight, cigarettes vanished from offices, restaurants, cafés and train stations as the French dutifully took their glowing butts outside — the only place where smoking was still permitted. But this being France, a backlash was almost certainly inevitable. According to a report released on Dec. 17 by an anti-smoking group, the initial obeisance of French smokers has now given way to people increasingly flaunting the law by lighting up indoors.

Anecdotal evidence abounds that French smokers are pushing back in ways that they previously didn't dare. On some French train lines — all of which are officially non-smoking — smokers frequently take over certain cars, thus far escaping punishment. Butts are also turning up in greater numbers in Paris' Metro. "I'm not bothering anyone, and if I am, they can go to another part of the platform," says a man who identified himself only as Adel as he smoked in the Etienne Marcel station recently. "If I see a Metro official, cop or someone who looks like they'll be a real pain, I won't light up. But otherwise, why shouldn't I smoke in the Metro when I want to and can get away with it? Especially because there are far worse smells in here than smoke!"

Down the street from the station, the manager of a plastic-enclosed caféterrace similarly rationalized bending the rules. "This is outside, and it's the only place where smokers are allowed, so it's all legal," says the man, who, perhaps aware that his enclosed smoking terrace is not actually kosher, requested that neither his name nor the name of his establishment be identified. "We have to live together, and this is one compromise to make that happen. Do you see anyone complaining?"

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