December 22, 2005
Partial ban on blankets
It looks more and more like smoking in pubs (or at least some pubs) is going to be banned. Personally I'm in favour of a partial ban — dry-led pubs serving plated, sit-down meals would become non-smoking, and wet-led pubs, which are often "community" pubs, would continue to allow people to smoke1. This means non-smokers taking on bar jobs will be able to find pubs to work in without exposure to environmental smoke, pub food will taste better, and those pubs which would die under a smoking ban get a reprieve. Most of the sort of people who don't like smoking in pubs probably already mostly go to dry-lead pubs anyway. Everybody wins, or at least nobody loses all that badly, I think.
However, recent research from some economists at UCL, reported in the Observer, adds an interesting twist.
Children's health will be put at risk from passive smoking if the government bans smoking in all restaurants and bars, according to dramatic new research out today.
The study, which will provoke fresh controversy over whether a partial ban would be the better option, concluded that parents, particularly poorer ones, who are prevented from smoking in bars tend to smoke more in front of their children at home. Passive smoking has been linked to breathing difficulties and asthma among children.
Now, I think that these stereotypical poor parents prone to smoking in pubs tend to go to "community" type pubs most of all. Which in my experience tend to be wet-led. So would it be fair to say that, for the sake of the children, a partial ban is actually a better bet than a total, blanket ban on smoking in pubs? Then again, this all flies in the face of research showing that a ban on smoking in enclosed public places is likely to reduce the amount of smoking at home. It's all so confusing.
I guess that if the balance of research shows that public health is best served by a total ban, then I can live with it; I do worry that it marks the beginning of the end for community pubs, though. But then I work in one, I would worry about that kind of thing, wouldn't I?
1 Dry sales in pubs are food sales, generally excluding things like crisps and nuts. Wet sales are everything sold over the bar, roughly. Hence a wet-led pub is one where the focus is on drink, whereas a dry-led pub makes most of its money through meals.
[Update 1: I mean led, not lead, apparently.]
[Update 2: Looks like a blanket ban is now more likely ]
Posted by James at 03:07
Tags for this entry: economics
politics
debate
pubs
smoking
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Comments
The problems being threefold here: firstly a lot of pubs will stop serving food to get around this ban, reducing its effectiveness and making cooks unemployed; secondly smokers are selfish and more demanding than non-smokers, and we will continue to get dragged to smoking pubs; thirdly the community pubs tend to be in working class areas - there is already about a five or six year gap in life expectancy depending how rich you are. I'm not mad keen on making it worse.
The children thing is, indeed, confusing.
Posted by: Un garcon pas comme les autres ![[OpenID Commenter Profile]](http://blog.jimbo.org.uk/static/openid-comment/openid.gif){kind=small}
at December 31, 2005 10:42 AM
To take your three points in order:
I'm not convinced all that many pubs will stop serving food. Pubs tend to either be "dry-led" or "wet-led", and those in the former category aren't going to ditch their major revenue source just to placate smokers. Those pubs which don't sell a lot of food anyway might stop, I suppose, but given they don't sell a lot of food this clearly isn't very significant. Also I think the demand for "eating out" in general, whether in pubs, restaurants or whatever, will not change, so I think jobs for cooks will just move around rather than vanish, but I have no hard facts to back up this intuition, so you should feel free to ignore it.
I do agree that in an environment where there are both types of pub, "mixed" groups of smokers and non-smokers will go to smoking pubs, and this is unfortunate for smokers with non-smoking friends. But surely this is no worse than the current situation, and better than the current situation for purely non-smoking groups, no?
Finally, yes, community pubs are in working class areas, and both poor people and smokers die young, relatively. And working class people are more likely to smoke, as I understand it, so the two effects are already additive. I'm not sure this difference will get significantly worse, given both factors are already in play...
And yes, it is rather :)
Posted by: James ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://blog.jimbo.org.uk/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 31, 2005 12:50 PM
"No worse than the current situation" isn't good enough for me though. As for how many pubs would stop serving food, the current estimate is 1 in 5. Mitchells & Butlers have said their entire chain will stop, and that's about 400 in one go.
Posted by: Un garcon pas comme les autres at December 31, 2005 05:02 PM
Wow. I hadn't seen the M&B thing. I'm surprised it's anything like that many!
Posted by: James at December 31, 2005 05:09 PM
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