Social impact of smoking bans

According to new research, smoking increases social isolation and loneliness.

Conducted by researchers at Imperial College London and UCL, you can read about it here.

On the face of it the results are hardly surprising. After all, if you ban smoking in every pub and social club in the country many smokers will choose to stay at home and if they are elderly or middle-aged and a regular pub goer it probably means the end of their social life as they previously knew it.

According to the researchers however it is the act of smoking - not the ban - that increases social isolation and loneliness among smokers. And their solution? More anti-smoking policies so fewer people smoke!

Reading the ‘findings’ I was reminded of a paper published by Forest in 2008, one year after the introduction of the smoking ban in England. It was called ‘The social impact of the smoking ban’ and it featured page after page of comments by smokers, some of them posted on an earlier version of this blog.

Some of the comments also featured in ‘Road To Ruin? The impact of the smoking ban on choice and personal freedom’, a Forest report by Rob Lyons published on the tenth anniversary of the ban in 2017.

‘The smoking ban had a huge impact on community pubs,’ wrote Rob. ‘The economic impact was widely reported at the time, albeit quickly forgotten. Almost completely ignored was the social impact on thousands of smokers.

‘In July 2008, one year after the ban was introduced in England, Forest published a selection of comments that had been posted online on websites and blogs. Here’s a handful:

“Personally I feel pretty unwelcome in any public space so I go out much less.”

“Prior to the ban I was a regular pub goer and member of a local pub pool team. All of that has ended. I now visit the pub around once or twice a month at best.”

“I am 67 years old and have been allowed to smoke in a pub or club for nearly fifty years. Since retirement a pub and club has been the centre of my social life and now I only go to a pub once a week, just to stay in contact with friends. I feel that my social life has been taken away from me and feel that the smoking ban is discrimination against the elderly because they have been stopped from doing something that they have legally been allowed to do for nearly all their lives.”

“I’m 43 and perform in a semi-pro pub-duo, singing and playing Irish standards etc. As such, I am someone who is ‘protected’ by the smoking ban. Well, it’s certainly protecting me against earning a living from music and it has utterly ruined the pub-going experience, not just in winter but, for landlocked city pubs, at any time. No smoking inside, no drinking outside. Result: near empty, atmosphere-free pubs.”

“I feel devalued, discriminated against, depressed, angry, and rejected from society because I smoke. I no longer have much of a social life as going out is not much of a pleasure. I was a civilised smoker. I understood I was in a minority and I understood not smoking in many public areas. I don’t understand being made to stand on the street in the cold and often rain – usually without my drink. I still feel bewildered that it is considered acceptable to treat a section of society in such a callous fashion.”

“For years I used to frequent my local pub every afternoon, for a quiet pint, sitting smoking roll-ups, and gazing meditatively into space, occasionally engaging in conversation with anyone who cared to talk. It was a little daily ritual, a tranquil refuge in an otherwise busy day. It was a way of keeping in touch with village news and gossip. I was well known, and cheerily greeted by name. All that ended with the smoking ban. My little daily ritual ceased. And anyway I now felt that smokers like me were unwelcome. The ‘No Smoking’ signs plastered everywhere may as well have said ‘No Smokers’. I lingered on outside in the pub’s large garden through the autumn, until it got too cold, when I ceased to go at all. And through it all I felt a terrible rage that this was being done to me, and to millions of smokers all around the country.”

Others, noted Rob, commented on how the smoking ban was having other unintended consequences:

I am currently practicing as a mental health social worker. Before that I was a social scientist and a professional musician. The ban has hit the most vulnerable in society the hardest – those in rural areas with few pubs losing what venues they could socialise in: landlocked locals, estate pubs, working men’s clubs, bingo halls, shisha bars. All these venues supplied a crucial social and cultural function. They created and sustained communities where people from all backgrounds met and socialised. This is no longer the case. The ban is creating social exclusion, loneliness and unemployment.”

This, wrote Rob, ‘raises another issue that needs to be addressed – loneliness and social isolation.’

In short, we’ve been raising the issue for years whilst highlighting one of the principal factors - the smoking ban. Yet tobacco control is now inverting that to suggest that if society is to tackle loneliness and social isolation among smokers - a problem the anti-smoking industry helped create - what we need are more not fewer anti-smoking policies.

As Chris Snowdon writes here:

‘Public health' activists are the kind of people who would put a brick through your window and then try to sell you double glazing. For years they have shed crocodile tears over tobacco sales leading to secondary poverty, as if it were not the direct result of the exorbitant taxation they campaigned for. Now they are claiming, in effect, that smoking causes loneliness. 

One other thing. The smoking ban - as Forest first pointed out in 2008 - had an immediate and devastating impact on pubs, urban inner city pubs in particular.

The cause - the smoking ban - was easily identifiable because research found that in the twelve months after bans were introduced in Ireland (2004), Scotland (2006) and England and Wales (2007) there was a clear escalation in pub closures, something for which there was no other obvious factor.

The global recession, for example, didn’t start until the second quarter of 2008 and while that clearly had an impact on pubs it couldn’t explain the earlier explosion in pub closures that followed the introduction of smoking bans in Ireland and the UK.

In total, in the decade that followed the ban, England lost 11,000 pubs - or one fifth of the pub estate prior to the ban. Yes, there were other factors but the smoking ban was one of the main reasons and their loss has affected not just smokers but non-smokers as well.

But try and tell the young people of today ... they won't believe you.

PS. According to ‘another study author from Imperial's National Heart & Lung Institute’, Professor Nick Hopkinson:

"These findings are another reason for the government to press on with introducing the policies needed to achieve its ambition for a smoke-free 2030. These include a 'polluter pays' levy on tobacco industry profits and raising the legal age for tobacco sales from 18 to 21 years."

Would that be the same Professor Nick Hopkinson who is chairman of the board of trustees at ASH? It surely would!