I am not recommending this because the Government wants to punish you, although it does, but because it is the only place you are likely to be allowed to smoke in peace for the forseeable future. The Home Office is not about to ban smoking in prisons.
But what about the health of non-smoking prisoners in the confined space? What about passive smoking by prison officers, whose workplace it is? N’importe. The tobacco allowance in prison is a means of control used by the authorities. Removing it would remove something of their capacity for arbitrary reward and punishment of individual prisoners. Plus withdrawing it would lead to riots, both acutely in fury at withdrawal, and chronically on losing the calming effects of nicotine.
So the lesson for prisoners in what Shami Chakrabarti calls HMP UK who do wish to smoke is plain. Threaten violence. You will either get your way as other aggressive sub-groups do, or be sent to the segregation block that is the officially acknowledged prison system – and there you may smoke all you like, provided you behave yourself.
So dangerous pleasures are bad. Unless they give the state leverage to control you. When they are good. Very New Labour.
Cigarettes are consumed at a prodigious rate by those with schizophrenia. Anyone who has worked in a psychiatric environment knows what a powerful therapeutic effect cigarettes can have – as opposed to cannabis. Occasionally managers and doctors from la-la land voice ideas of banning it in psychiatric hospitals. They haven’t got a clue. It is a fact that smoking also facilitates patient-staff relations – many a time I have seen a joint fag defuse a difficult or dangerous situation.
How soon is it going to be before we see ‘Smoking Wardens’ on the streets in Britain, to go along with Blunkett’s Bouncers (Community Police Wardens) and Tonys Tossers (Social Behaviour Wardens, whose only power is to issue an ASBO)?
As an interesting aside, apparently in Eire it is normal to see space heaters outside pubs and bars, in order to keep smokers warm. I wonder how the enviroweenies will react to the increased damage to the environment as a result of all those heaters outside pubs and clubs in the UK.
“How soon is it going to be before we see ‘Smoking Wardens’ on the streets in Britain, to go along with Blunkett’s Bouncers (Community Police Wardens) and
Tonys Tossers (Social Behaviour Wardens, whose only power is to issue an ASBO)?”
All of the above of course joining the legion of around 7 million public workers who we fund and who probably all vote for their employers NU-Labour….
” I wonder how the enviroweenies will react to the increased damage to the environment as a result of all those heaters outside pubs and clubs in the UK.”
They’ll probably ban them.
Forget Farenheight 911 – what about 451…or whatever the temperature of a lit cigarette end is…Fire Brigade going around putting people out…
I want the right to go to a prison without any tobacco whatsoever. I think such prisons will be relatively drug and violence free places.
It’s been quite a week – and it’s still only Wednesday.
ID cards, smoking bans…. does no one else feel like they are drowning in the regulation pouring from this government like the spewing of a ruptured sewer pipe?
chris: “So dangerous pleasures are bad. Unless they give the state leverage to control you. When they are good. Very New Labour.”
Excellent! That’s got to be a contender for quote of the day.
Tell it to these folks. Haven’t seen a single poster who disagrees with the ban.
(Link)
Face it guys, you’re in the distinct minority. Expect to be tyrannised by the majority. Even if you think that majority is a largely silent one, they’re complicit by staying quiet.
I’m actually of two minds about it. Still, at least they have not taken away your right to smoke in your own home.
GCooper: Too add to my anti-bureaucratic misery I have been reading The Bumper Book of Goverment Waste. Man is it all depressing.
it still has to go through the House of Lords.
its not law yet, is it?
“As an interesting aside, apparently in Eire it is normal to see space heaters outside pubs and bars, in order to keep smokers warm. I wonder how the enviroweenies will react to the increased damage to the environment as a result of all those heaters outside pubs and clubs in the UK.”
There was a smoking ban in Toronto as of June of 2004. Around fall, the restaurants and cafes all started putting up plastic-walls and space heaters on their patios, so that smokers could eat/have a coffee and smoke without freezing. Surprise surprise, they all came down by mid-winter, because the city government – outraged by this entrepreneurial effort to obey the letter while thumbing noses at the spirit – decided to outlaw the covered patios as well.
Of course, it was ONLY smokers on the patios, as they weren’t as warm as inside. And it quite effectively kept nonsmokers from eating amidst cigarette smoke. So the issue there couldn’t have been health, it had to be control.
As always.
Glad I’m in Japan, where you can still smoke inside.
The Wobbly Guy said: “Still, at least they have not taken away your right to smoke in your own home.”
But, didn’t the government recently state that it was to allow two prostitutes to operate from their own home without prosecution for running a brothel?
So, their home for this purpose will be their place of business.
And since smoking will be banned in places of business, it will be legal for them to turn tricks for the punters without fear of the cops, but the moment they light up for a post-coital cigarette…
I should think that the day they ban smoking in Japan is the day that BAT and RJR go into receivership.
Well, apart from the fact that if you go to prison you don’t have any ‘rights’ at all – you broke the rules and now you pay the price – there are some other factors involved in the UK prison system. Firstly the government make a significant sum of money from selling tobacco, cigarettes, rolling papers etc to prisoners, which I doubt they wish to lose. Secondly I would not like to be the prison officer in charge of x number of thousands of prisoners all going cold turkey because of Tony Blair or Patricia Hewitt’s sensibilities. Thirdly there is a certain amount of drug dealing allowed within the UK prison system – a stoned inmate is not going to be so predisposed to assaulting a prison officer.
JT: I shall restrain myself from making any jokes about “ready rubbed” and “rough shag”.
What if brothels could also sell alcohol?…
Can’t find the link, but there has been some support in the states (California I believe, naturally) to ban smoking in prison. Ditto smoking in your car (if there are children present) and your own home (again, if children are present).
What if it’s your children that smoke?
Guess California hasn’t thought of that yet. Please don’t tell them. They’ll probably want to conclude that you are a bad parent and take your children to live in some foster home.
Many prisons and, I believe, all county jails in Florida completely ban tobacco. So in the UK one is freer inside prison than outside of it. And you get free room and board, color TV … Hmm
The Corner.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
BLAIR’S LEGACY: AN UNFREE COUNTRY [Iain Murray]
Richard North briefly spells out why the UK isn’t really a free country any more. Last night’s imposition of a total ban on smoking in bars, pubs and private clubs throughout the nation (except the Palace of Westminster where MPs work) is just yesterday’s example. In The Times today, Danny Finkelstein explain’s Blair’s latest wheeze: giving Ministers (the executive branch) the power to amend, repeal and replace any legislation without recourse to Parliament (the legislature).
Tony Blair’s work, all of it.
Posted at 11:29 AM
A hard decision MP or crook,just a cas of getting found out really.
I’d heard that some US death rows had banned smoking. They deemed it “injurious to health”.
Smoking is banned in pretty much all the jails and prisons here in Texas.
Here in Massachusetts, the Commonwealth has banned smoking in the prisons. And the mental hospitals too. In fact the only institution that did not face such a ban were the nursing homes. That’s because a state legislator had an elderly mother who smoked like a chimney.
And they wonder why the Commonwealth is hemmoraging population.
Another victim here. Christ.
Another victim here. Christ.
As I have said to anti-ban types many times, defend your ‘right’ to smoke in public all you like. Just don’t object when I pour a bucket of water over your head to douse your noxious and annoying health risk (ESPECIALLY when I am eating). Does it need legislating ? In the wider sense, nothing should (imo there is nothing worse than the tyranny of the majority), however human nature being what it is some individuals will not respect my health and zone of personal comfort without either legislation or the afore-mentioned bucket of water.
The talk about the dangers of passive smoking are mostly junk science – and even if they were not they are not relevant.
No one is forced to work in a bar or other business that allows customers to smoke. Therefore, for people who say “my health is at risk” the reply is simple – go get a job somewhere else.
The mixture of day and night shifts (and the diet that went with them) that I worked for years as a security guard most likely undermined my health rather more than “passive smoking”.
That is the nature of human existance – “life is a bitch and then you die”.
If people want government to ban everything they happen to dislike it will also ban things they like.
Perhaps the various trash who make up the House of Commons will have a whim to ban Association Football (the game where a round ball is kicked about by 11 men aside). At least I could not accuse the M.P.s of seeking cheap popularity by such a move.
I would oppose such a ban on libertarian grounds – but I must admit that such an event would amuse me (especially if the penality for playing or watching Association Football was death by public hanging).
I write as someone who has never smoked in his life.
In Eire it has worked fine…of course the pubs have the “patio” heaters and it seems to be cool so far. It’s quite odd to be in a wee pub and have no one smoking though.
I have heard of a pub that has a small outbuilding in which they have taken the roof off and put in tables and chairs – fine weather only or so I’m told as it has four walls no roof is allowed.
The comments about California above made me think of Mr Schwarzenegger, apparently he has a cigar smoking terrace at his place of work so he and his buddies can enjoy a non cuban. 😉
Being a non tobacco smoker I think that this no smoking law is a complete nonsense. I don’t mind visitors to my home smoking at all. The smell of the room the next day isn’t so pleasant but hey, life is short, why deny my friends their vice?
Lusiphur, would you really be so rude as to pour a bucket of water over someone’s head without first asking him not to smoke? How about if someone was singing loudly or eating smelly cheese? Do you really have the right to dictate by violence how people should act, without any preliminaries? Civilized interaction requires a request for civil behavior before any drastic action. You are a barbarian. Why would you think anyone would approve of such an attack? And, by the way, no, you do not have the right to pour a bucket of water over someone’s head because they are smoking. It’s called battery. Deal with it. Act like an adult and a gentleman, if possible. And stop lying about the “health risk”.
As we find all too often in the UK now it is one thing for The Great Dictator to instruct us on how to lead our lives, complete with his own little private rubberstamp assembly to enforce his views. It is another completely different thing for his dictat to be enforced, as we have seen with use of mobile phones in cars (police don’t even bother now), street drinking (again they don’t enforce the law), ‘soft’ drug use (not even that) and a myriad of other Islingtonian measures that the police just ignore. I just don’t see that they will even bother with the smoking ban now, unless they actually need an excuse to go in after someone in an office or a bar – hence the suggestion that Blair will introduce Smoking Wardens.
So, you’re allowed to smoke in prison. And in prison, you are also guaranteed immediate healthcare if you need it (it’s your human right, after all).
Thumping your M.P. has never looked so attractive.
Sorry, musn’t say that; it’s inciting violence.
Beheading your M.P. has never looked so attractive.
Lusipher
The issue actually has nothing to do with smoking. It’s about property rights.
Bar & restaurant owners should be able to decide whether or not they allow people to smoke on their property.
Lusipher,
This would be the bucket of water you always carry when dining out,or do you call a waiter and order one?
What weight band do you drench in,Rowan Atkinson or Mike Tyson?It is so important not to drench above ones weight.
Eating smelly cheese should be a felony.
Smelly cheese is one of the best things that has ever happened to mankind, although I would definitely place the internet first.
Lusipher – what Ron Brick asked. Do you keep a bucket of water in your car? – or do you simply carry it into a pub or a private home with you, unremarked?
And if you summon a waiter and order the bucket of water for the purpose of reprimanding individuals who are smoking against your wishes, would it have ice? If you’re going for maximum misery for people who don’t agree with you, I would vote yes for the ice, because the cubes can slither into their clothes.
I think you sound a little obsessive.
Heh, exactly the answers I would have expected here. Keep the faith, mensch.
Naturally, I would ask them to stub out first. If, as normal, they refused to then whatever dousing material is handy would do. No one who claims they have aright to smoke can then say I dont have a right to douse said smoke. Its the same thing. My enjoyment versus your enjoyment.
Oh and to Paul Marks, unless you are a qualified medical professional then your bold claim that ‘passive smoking is junk science’ is pretty rhetoric but nothing more.
Wrong. It is not their right to smoke that at issue but their right to engage in consensual behaviour on private property. If the person who owns the property allows people to visit/work there (and the folks who work there have accepted the job on the basis that people will smoke around them) and also allows people to spray fire extingishers at each other (sounds like fun to me), then sure.
But if people ARE permitted to smoke on private property and you spray them to put it out, expect to quite reasonably have you face kicked in and get violently ejected from the property as a consequence of assaulting someone. You don’t want to be around smokers? So they don’t go in there or leave if people decline to put it out to accomodate you! If the owner allows it, what gives you the right to prohibit it? It is not your property. Go away and take your lungs elsewhere.
… unless you are a qualified medical professional then your bold claim that ‘passive smoking is junk science’ is pretty rhetoric but nothing more.
I do love an argument from authority. 🙂
The truth of the matter is that the question of the existence of passive smoking is statistical, not medical, since individual diagnosis of diseases linked with smoking (passive or active) cannot determine their specific cause (assuming the word cause is meaningful with multifactor ailments). Most medics, as their passion for screening testifies, are hopeless at statistics (when it doesn’t serve to bolster their authority). I don’t know how good Paul’s statistics are.
Even those who are happy that there is a statistically significant risk associated with tobacco smoke in a specific sort of workplace are not obliged to make the leap that because it is statistically detectable it is also worth doing something about. To conclude that any risk to health, however small, always requires drastic action to mitigate it is the sort of judgment that goes with a medical qualification — but also with a legal one, and with a journalist’s grasp of teeline shorthand.
Actually Perry you are right its exactly about that. I define having smoke blown in my face as assault, a_n_smoker might define being drenched as assault. Neither actually are by the current definition of the law. Therefore I have as much right to enforce a smoke free environment as they do a smoke filled one. Admittedly, the owner has the right to chuck us all out but that’s the way the wheel turns.
I was throwing out an absurd example wrt to drenching someone but the point is valid. The statistics around passive smoking that I have seen seem sound. The sight of friends who suffer from asthma desperately sucking on their inhaler to draw a breath, the attack triggered by the smoker who is sitting across from them is all I need to convince me that passive smoke is a health risk.
On the other hand my mother wont visit my house because I wont let her smoke. However, I know smokers who wouldn’t dream of lighting up in a largely non-smoking group because they see that as rude and boorish. If smokers (in general) were to accede to my polite requests to stub out as my friend is deeply asthmatic and I would like to enjoy my food without being put off by their smoke then I would be right with you in the trenches against government meddling in our lives.
This is one of the times where government done good as far as I am concerned.
You have that all wrong. If the owner of the property allows smoking, then if you come into his property in the knowlage that (a) it is someone elses property and therefore (b) it may be smokefilled if the owner allows smoking, then how is it different from you gaggling people who talk loudly on the grounds it might hurt your ears?
If you do not like it, they stay off the property of people who do things you do not like. You are saying you have a right to come onto other people’s property and impose what you regard as acceptable behaviour in opposition to the owner’s wishes. If he has a big SMOKING ALLOWED sign up, you still think you can come in and stop people smoking? If so, why?
Lusiphur – on “passive smoking” plenty of “qualified” (i.e. people with medical qualifications) can be found on to back either side of the argument.
However, “qualified security….” are united in interpreting the available statistics as showing that black people are more likely to commit violent crimes than white people – therefore, according to your position, black people should be banned from going to bars and other such places on health grounds.
Have you considered joining the K.K.K?
After all the various “Jim Crow” laws in the old South (banning blacks from various private establishments) were partly justified on “health” grounds.
If you do not like the K.K.K. (and, I admit, they were always low class), there is always the “Progressive” movement – they were very keen on eugenics, “social hygiene” and all the rest of it.
They tended to be anti smoking types to. It was not all about graduated income taxes, nationalizing utilities and sterilizing the “racially inferior” – it was about banning booze and anti smoking as well.
I am sure you would have fitted in well.
Private property is private property Lusiphur. If I choose to allow black people, or smokers in a bar (or any other business) I happen to own (not that I own any) that is my affair – it is nothing to do with you, or that bunch of interesting people in the House of Commons.
You (or they) can open up a “smoke free” bar if you wish.
Only Lucifer (to unveil him) would take the side of the government against HIS OWN MOTHER!! What is the world coming to?
Well, this is getting quite heated. To the halfwit who said I should be in the K.K.K, you know nothing about me and as such your attempt to score a point with a cheap shot just makes you laughable.
Perry, is correct in a sense. If a sign says ‘smoking allowed’ then I enter at my own risk. However, if there isnt a sign saying please do not ask people not to smoke then what exactly is wrong with me doing so ?
Oh and to Robert Speirs, my asking my mother not to smoke in my house and her refusal to visit because of that is a perfect example of libertarian principle in action. Its my private property and I prefer people not to smoke.
Nothing – but if it’s an establishment where it’s clear that smoking is allowed (you’ll be able to tell by the large number of smokers) you will have made an ass out of yourself.
As Perry said – the proper thing to do, if you don’t like smoking, is to patronize an establishment that does not allow it.
Certainly you are within your rights to ask people not to smoke in your presence. You are not within your rights to assault people if they do not comply (dousing with water counts, I believe). And please do keep in mind that the owner of the establishment is free to force you to leave if you are annoying his customers (by, e.g., asking them repeatedly not to smoke).
In the final analysis, the only rights we need worry about with regard to smoking are the rights of the owner of the establishment to control who enters and leaves his property. (That is, until politico busy-bodies go about inventing imaginary “rights,” as UK Commons has just done.)
You would perhaps also like to ban cats? And cars? Cat fur and car exhaust fumes also trigger asthma attacks, in case you didn’t know.
And just because you think the government was right on this issue doesn’t mean you’ll agree when they start banning other things on “health grounds”.