Poll: Majority support smoking rooms in pubs and clubs

Yesterday I linked to the 'IEA Lifestyle Poll' whose headline figures were reported by the Daily Mail and Daily Express and are recorded on the ComRes website as follows:

A new poll for the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) conducted by ComRes finds significant opposition to sin taxes and majority agreement that the government should not interfere in individuals’ lifestyle choices.

Seven in ten (70%) British adults say it should be the individual’s responsibility to make their own lifestyle choices and the government should not interfere. Looking at those expressing a preference, this figure rises to over 80%.

Half of Britons (51%) believe indirect taxes are too high, this rises to seven in ten (69%) among only those who declared a preference. Eight in ten (78%) giving an opinion believe they hit the poorest the hardest.

A majority of Britons believe the government should not offer financial incentives to people who are trying to lose weight (61%), stop smoking (60%) or stop drinking excessively (62%).

Ukip voters are the most hostile to government intervention on lifestyle choices across the board.

I've now had a chance to read the survey results in full and I'm amazed no-one has highlighted what, to me, is the most interesting result.

Asked to agree or disagree with the statement, 'Owners of pubs and private members clubs should be allowed to have a private room for people to smoke in if they want to', the 4135 respondents reacted as follows:

51% agree
35% disagree
13% don't know

Interestingly there is very little difference between men and women:

53% of men, 50% of women agreed
35% of men, 36% of women disagreed
12% of men, 15% of women don't know

There's a modest difference between age groups but those who agree that 'pubs and private members clubs should be allowed to have a private room for people to smoke in if they want to' outnumber those who disagree in every age group bar none:

18-24: 40% agree, 31% disagree, 29% don't know
25-34: 54% agree, 31% disagree, 15% don't know
35-44: 52% agree, 32% disagree, 16% don't know
45-54: 55% agree, 36% disagree, 9% don't know
55-64: 57% agree, 35% disagree, 8% don't know
65+: 48% agree, 44% disagree, 9% don't know

I've no idea why this hasn't been publicised because the information is in the public domain. (You'll find it on the ComRes website here, Table 4.)

Spread the word!

Comments

[Misty]

I certainly think that people are (finally!) starting to wake up to what all this lifestyle-control-masquerading-as-caring is actually all about. It’s about those who have any degree of power or influence at all using that power to bully whatever particular group they personally happen to dislike – which always, of course, just happens to be a group to which they don’t belong. Funny that.

I think it’s taken the smoking ban to wake people up to this. I’m sure that many people, prior to the ban, genuinely believed all that guff about “all we want is …” but the advent of the ban, followed as it was within a few short years by a continual stream of demands for any extensions to it which the zealots could think of, has made many non-smokers stop and think that maybe – just maybe – smokers’ doom-laden pre-ban warnings that “it wouldn’t stop there” were not so far short of the mark after all and that, ergo and, as predicted, it is inevitable that, eventually, one of their “sinful pleasures” will come under the spotlight.

I think, too, that (even more slowly, sadly), the public have come to realise that objecting to increasing any bans/restrictions on other activities which are based on exactly the same premise (with just a bit of minor adjustment and word changes) as smoking restrictions are, is a hopeless cause, because it screams hypocrisy at every turn, and hypocrites are easily ignored once they are accurately highlighted as such. And objecting to restrictions on something which you like, whilst supporting the same restrictions against something else, just because you don’t like it, is hypocrisy – always a very weak basis for any argument.

So the results of these polls would tend to indicate that non-smokers have, finally, realised that the only way to keep the zealots away from their own doors is for them to start objecting to the very premises upon which the smoking ban, and, indeed, in many respects the whole anti-smoking movement, is based. In short, they can no longer remain neutral in this particular war because to do so simply means that, once smokers have been punished/restricted/banished as much as they can be (which can’t be very far away now), the winners in this war won’t just hang up their hats and leave everyone else alone, because that’s not their way. No, the “next logical step” will be to cast around for whichever of those “neutral” groups are the easiest target to scapegoat as the next “greatest health threat.” This is, of course, already happening, with anti-alcohol, salt, sugar, rich foods, fast foods, inactivity, driving cars and e-cigarette campaigners already vying for the top slot, but with no clear front runner at the moment, there is still a chance for people to fight back. But to do so effectively, they must, as non-smokers, start speaking up on smokers’ behalf, no matter how disdainfully they may have regarded them in the past. Otherwise, whether they like it or not, all of their arguments will come to naught and within a much shorter time than they might imagine, they’ll find themselves as persecuted, marginalised and “denormalised” as, now, are smokers.