Reflections on the Irish smoking ban

Today is officially the tenth anniversary of the public smoking ban in Ireland.

There's relatively little about it in the papers today because the story was covered extensively earlier in the week following a 'symposium' at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (which I wrote about on Monday).

This led to some journalists reporting that the anniversary was on March 24 which demonstrates the grip tobacco control has on the media!

Fortunately you can always rely on the Irish Examiner and today the Cork-based newspaper has published two more articles celebrating the ban.

One – by Micheál Martin, who introduced the ban and is now leader of the main opposition party Fianna Fáil – is entirely predictable.

What is breathtaking is the extent of the propaganda, then and now.

See: Many lives have been saved with smoking ban but we’ve more to do and 10 years after smoking ban, Martin questions Coalition’s commitment.

The other article, billed online as the 'top story', is headlined Smoking ban breathed new life into pubs. I'll let you read it for yourself.

Inevitably there are proprietors who have done well since the ban. Or perhaps they have increased business relative to their competitors by spending large sums of money on comfortable smoking areas.

But what about the 1000+ publicans whose bars closed in the aftermath of the ban (ie before the recession hit the country)?

Take this research published by Forest in 2010:

Using data from the Revenue Commissioners, researchers found that the number of pub losses demonstrate a very close statistical relationship between the introduction of the smoking ban in 2004 and the rapid decline of the Irish pub.

This relationship, says the report, is considerably stronger than those that could be attributed to other factors such as the recession, alcohol duty or supermarket competition, although all of these are likely to have been contributing factors.

Analysis of statistics set out in the Statistical Report on the Revenue website showed that Ireland lost 1,097 pubs in the four years following the ban.

See Smoking ban to blame for decline of Irish pub, says new research.

To put that in perspective, in 2008 1,097 pubs represented eleven per cent of Ireland's entire pub estate. Sadly those publicans are no longer in business and are therefore unavailable to debate whether the smoking ban has indeed 'breathed new life into pubs'.

Needless to say that story has not been reflected in any reports in Ireland this week. We are simply asked to accept, without dissent, that without the ban Ireland would be a poorer, unhealthier place to live.

Or, in the words of Micheál Martin:

Ten years on it is clear that the ban has been a success and that its impact has been positive and everyone can take pride in the fact that Ireland led the way in Europe on this matter.

Comments

[V]

With regards to the article about the smoking ban "breathing new life into pubs", I'd love to see the child asthma rates for the 1960s or 70s. How thick are these people to think it has anything to do with smoking? They only see what they want to see.