Peter Jackson column

Feb 23 2006 By Peter Jackson, The Journal

It was a little over 10 years ago that I predicted to a landlord that "they" would ban smoking in pubs before long.

He laughed scornfully at me - not for the first time - but, as usual, I've been proved right.

I knew, you see, that once "they" had sufficiently finessed the evidence on passive smoking, all defence would crumble before those with a mania for banning things.

And that is a huge group. I was interested to learn that now something like a third to one half of the population believes in banning smoking altogether. Presumably, the penalty, as with the workplace ban, would be a fine, which if you didn't pay would mean being sent to prison, which doesn't seem much of a deterrent, as prison will be one of the few places you can still smoke.

Something else which seems to have been finessed is the evidence regarding the economic consequences of the ban.

The official line is that if there are any, they will be only beneficial, a line backed by the British Medical Association, which points to a report from the Irish Central Statistics Office saying that in November 2004, seven months after the ban, bar sales were down just 2.8% year on year, comparing favourably with the previous year's decline of 7.1%.

But a more recent study by Insight Research shows that two-thirds of Irish pubs have lost trade since the ban and for two-thirds of that figure the losses have been significant.

In July 2003, New York State banned smoking in bars and, according to a report by Ridgewood Economic Associates, this has led to the loss of 2,650 jobs, $50m in lost worker earnings and $71.5m in gross state product.

In California a ban was imposed at the tail end of a recession, following which total taxable sales statewide increased 32% in five years, but bars and restaurants were well below this figure and more than 1,000 went out of business.

Again in Connecticut, after a ban, bar owners claimed a drop in sales of 60% and in Maine, bar and restaurant patrons drove over the Canadian border to light up.

This should come as no surprise. If there were going to be no economic consequences, bars and restaurants would have imposed their own bans without legislation.