Majority of licensees support smoking rooms and designated smoking bars
Saturday, July 7, 2012 at 11:52 
Almost seven out of ten licensees want the smoking ban amended to allow for separate smoking rooms.
An exclusive survey of the Publican's Morning Advertiser readership revealed 68.3% either agree or strongly agree that pubs should be permitted to have separate smoking rooms, in line with some European countries. Furthermore, six out of 10 felt there should be designated smoking and non-smoking bars.
The survey, published in this week's edition, follows a major feature about the smoking ban that appeared in the Morning Advertiser in May. It included a four-page editorial feature plus a four-page cover wrap that was placed by the Forest-run Save Our Pubs and Clubs campaign.
The cover wrap (above right) featured two pages of advertorial. One was headlined: 'Out in the cold: why smokers are turning their backs on the British pub'. The other read: 'It's time to relax the smoking ban: Government should look to Europe say campaigners'.
It appears that the majority of publicans agree with us.
The two features are now available as a special supplement that you can download and view here.
It includes comments by Joe Jackson and Pensioner Ellie plus quotes from other readers of this blog: Pat Nurse, Nick Lowe, Tim Paton, Liz Barber and Jocelyn Erskine-Kellie.
Reader Comments (3)
So 68.3% of publicans want the smoking ban changed, back in the days when Britain was a democracy that would have mean't something. When the ban was introduced, ONS surveys confirmed more than 65% of the those questioned said they preferred a choice of indoor areas to a complete indoor ban.
The total ban based on the politicizing of shody scientific studies unfairly discriminates against almost a quarter of the population and should never have been allowed in the first place.
Even now after repeated attempts at telling us that the ban is popular, that people are "disconcerted by even an unlit cigarette" (that's from a piece on the BBC website today about e-fag etiquette), opinions are largely unchanged. Mintel recently found that 3 in 10 people thought pubs were more pleasant since the ban. And yes - that was how it was reported..... rather than the rather more obvious 7 in 10 presumably thinking pubs are less pleasant.
Glad to see the truth peeking through about a separate smoking room.
But wait, it will only be a matter of time before the survey fixers and junk scientists come out with their usual cant that 68% prefer smoke free pubs.