Don't shoot, I'm a smoker!
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 at 11:13 
It was a straw poll based on a very small sample but it nevertheless provides an interesting insight into the minds of many smokers today.
As part of a project Forest is working on in the run-up to the fifth anniversary of the smoking ban in England, we sent photographer Dan Donovan to take pictures of people smoking outside pubs.
The response, he reports, was disappointing. "I approached plenty of smokers but only a few agreed to have their picture taken.
"With this impromptu kind of shoot it takes some time to get around. First, I have to explain to strangers what I'm doing. This in turn leads to a group discussion that can sometimes get quite heated.
"One woman I approached was pretty curt and said 'I'm not interested' even before I explained what I was doing. She then calmed down and said she didn't want her picture taken as her children didn't know she smoked.
"Other smokers didn't want their picture taken either. Some denied that they even smoked when clearly they did!
"Another said that he thought the ban was good as it has helped him cut down."
It wasn't all bad. "Some thanked me for what I was doing and wanted their picture taken with me in it!"
Many commented adversely about the ban. Reactions included:
"The ban has taken away my freedom of choice."
"In Florida you can smoke in non-food bars, it should be like that here."
A doorman said, "Non-smoking laws have killed the pub trade."
Overall, however, Dan reports that, "My overriding feeling is that the anti-smoker clan have successfully intimidated the smoking community to such a degree that very few smokers dare to voice a true opinion.
"There was no shortage of smokers, just a shortage of brave smokers."
Photographs by Dan Donovan
Reader Comments (7)
I'm not a bit surprised.
The previous government banned foxhunting and declared open season on smokers instead, and with them leading the chase.
Anti tobacco is one thing, but when the government joins in there is increasingly nowhere left to hide.
It's a new experience for an upstanding , law abiding citizen and I don't think anyone outside the shooting gallery can quite understand the almost constant stress it puts a person under.
Me neither. Why would anyone come out when they know as soon as they do they are open targets for abuse.
We all have a duty to spread the word to smokers to be loud and proud and embrace their enjoyment of smoking or do us all a favour and quit.
Hardly surprising, given how many celebrity smokers have been crucified for setting a bad example.....
The dangers of ETS is, I believe, behind a lot of apathy amongst smokers. The overwhelming majority of smokers actually believe that their smoke IS harming others, and until the truth comes to their attention, they will remain in their apathetic state.
It's gonna take something to make these smokers get mad before they're going to rebel. I firmly believe that raising awareness to the ETS fraud, is the key to our whole smoking "crusade!"
I don't know about anyone else here but for me the message is not about promoting smoking but promoting people's right to be left alone in peace and not stigmatised or marginalised if they choose to consume any legal product because of scaremongering by wealthy political lobby groups in the pay of direct industry competitors.
I am against the waste of cash on futile public health campaigns such as smoking because that funding could be so much better spent - such as on care of the elderly, for example, who appear to be neglected to death by the NHS because it has no cash which ASH doesn't seem to have a problem in getting.
I suspect that the smokers that are standing outside pubs are embarrassed to have their photos taken not because they are smokers, but that they are embarrassed at standing outside pubs.
After all who in their right mind will pay bar prices for a drink, leave the drink inside and then go and stand outside to enjoy a cigarette ?
That is why they shied away from the camera...They know that they are idiots and don't want the world knowing.
Standing around outside pubs well there is no dignity in that. I've always thought that peoples dignity is a worthy argument of putting forward against the ban.
Pubs accommodated everyone until 2007 when the ban was introduced, this ensured that a large minority would in effect be excluded from the social scene. The ban excludes so many people, that I don't think they should be called pubs anymore.