Twenty years ago today, New York banned smoking in indoor public places
Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 12:30 This week marks the 20th anniversary of the New York smoking ban.
The legislation that prohibited smoking in almost every bar and restaurant in NYC was signed by Mayor Mike Bloomberg on December 30, 2002, and took effect on Sunday March 30, 2003.
There were some exemptions, including cigar bars, but it was nevertheless a major development in the war on smoking.
In the UK however media interest was relatively muted. 'New York considers smoking ban' reported the BBC in August 2002, but on the day the law was enacted the BBC News website chose to ignore it.
A report in the Telegraph amounted to just 167 words, but that was 167 more than most newspapers in Britain.
Even in New York the coverage was subdued. According to Guardian columnist Zoe Williams:
The city of New York, at midnight on Sunday, banned smoking from all its bars and restaurants. Though there was a fair amount of clamour beforehand (many New Yorkers pointed out how stressed they were, what with the war and whatnot), the New York Times yesterday was absolutely silent on the matter.
Funnily enough, a very similar thing happened in England when the smoking ban came into effect on Sunday July 1, 2007.
In anticipation of a busy day, media wise, I went in to the Forest office in London and the phone didn't ring once. Or, if it did, it was only because a couple of interviews were cancelled in favour of something more newsworthy.
The response (or lack of it) took us by surprise because it was in such stark contrast to the media storm that greeted the vote by MPs almost 17 months earlier.
The apathy when the New York ban was introduced was different.
In the early 2000s talk of a comprehensive public smoking ban in England was restricted to just two cities, London and Liverpool.
In 2002 however a Greater London Authority committee examined the evidence, and interviewed witnesses (including Forest).
After a six-month investigation they concluded that the threat of passive smoking didn't justify a public smoking ban and the idea was kicked into touch.
Meanwhile a private bill that would have given local authorities in Liverpool and London the right to enforce unilateral smoking bans lost momentum and petered out.
In fact, from a UK perspective, the game-changer was not New York in 2003 but Ireland in 2004 because it was the ban in Ireland that directly influenced the Scottish Executive and led to a ban in Scotland, followed by similar laws in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
The New York ban did however introduce Forest to Joe Jackson. The English musician had been living in New York for two decades, I think, when the ban was introduced, and his was one of the louder voices who argued against it even after it was in force.
In April 2004, for example, the New York Post reported that:
Joe Jackson is speakin’ out against Mayor Bloomberg’s smoking ban.
The singer has written a song bashing the ban that was enacted a year ago, and he’ll perform it for the first time in the Big Apple this month.
The song, “In 20-0-3,” takes a satirical look at the ban, which Jackson says is “escalating social tension.”
“I didn’t really write it with an agenda,” Jackson told The Post. “But having written it, I thought maybe it can make a difference.”
The tune describes a soldier returning home from Iraq, after losing his right arm in battle.
“You can do what you want, you can march off to war,” Jackson sings. “But in 20-0-3 you can’t smoke in a bar.”
Jackson told The Post that the law is based on “political correctness and junk science.”
“I would challenge Bloomberg to show us the evidence of these 1,000 people who are supposedly dying from secondhand smoke every year.”
Jackson is donating all proceeds from the song to several groups who are fighting the smoking ban.
One of those groups was Forest and Joe subsequently became an important part of the campaign that tried to stop a comprehensive smoking ban being introduced in England.
Writing for the Daily Telegraph in November 2003 (Stubbing out? Not if I can help it), he described his experience of New York following the ban and urged the UK government not to follow suit:
Britain can lead the world on this issue, with a smoking policy more considerate toward non-smokers than, say, that of Eastern Europe, but more realistic than the extreme prohibitionism of California and New York. Politicians, take note: you can win headlines and popularity with less, not more, restrictive legislation; by being more, not less, reasonable.
In February 2004 Joe told the Independent, They are using 'junk science' to bully us.
Later that year he wrote a well-received essay, published by Forest, entitled 'The Smoking Issue', a copy of which was presented to John Reid after Joe shared a platform with the Labour health secretary at a fringe meeting at the 2004 Labour conference in Brighton.
An updated version, Smoke, Lies and the Nanny State was published in 2007.
As we all know our campaign ended in failure but, back in New York, things were to get even worse for smokers. In 2011 the ban was extended to parks, beaches and public squares, and in 2018 it was extended to public housing.
There was even a threat to ban smoking “while walking”.
That hasn't happened yet but who knows what what madness will afflict the next generation of politicians?
To the best of my knowledge cigar bars are still exempt from the New York smoking ban but for how much longer?
Even in 2005, when I visited New York for the first time, there were only eight cigar bars in the entire city. I described one, very briefly, here:
The bar was air-conditioned but it wasn't plush. In fact it was quite scruffy and differed from an ordinary bar in just one respect – you could smoke a cigar indoors without the threat of prosecution.
Apart from two other customers and the barman it was also completely empty.
To be honest, there wasn't much more to say, but perhaps I went there with the wrong attitude.
Truth is, I've never understood why it should be legal to smoke a cigar in a designated bar but not a cigarette.
If he reads this Joe might like to add a comment on the current situation in New York (I believe he now divides his time between Berlin and New York) but I'll leave you with this observation, part of an article he wrote for Spiked in July 2010 when we were still fighting for an amendment to the smoking ban in England:
Ultimately, the problem here goes way beyond ‘to smoke or not to smoke’. There is a worrying general trend towards more and more intrusive legislation, justified by more and more dishonest and misleading junk science and fearmongering.
Typical of this are recent claims that the continuation of a long-term decline in heart attacks is ‘caused’ by smoking bans, and the invention of a new threat, ‘thirdhand smoke’, on the basis of no scientific evidence whatsoever.
What is needed is not just the repeal of the smoking ban and other illiberal laws, but a return to healthy scepticism about the claims made about various risks, fairness and tolerance towards others with different habits, and a large dose of common sense.
In 2003 New York chose to reject fairness and common sense and healthy scepticism. Worse, after stepping down as mayor Mike Bloomberg stepped up his anti-smoking crusade.
In the last decade Bloomberg Philanthropies is said to have invested $1.1 billion in the fight against tobacco use.
Significantly New York City's Smoke Free Air Act now 'prohibits smoking and the use of electronic cigarettes [my emphasis] in most workplaces and public spaces' - a warning to vaping advocates who think that, by supporting the war on tobacco, reduced risk vapour products will be treated more favourably.
The reality is that one ban invariably leads to another, and another. It’s simply a matter of time, and the clock is always ticking.
Ask New Yorkers.
PS. I can't write about the New York smoking ban without mentioning Audrey Silk, 'voice of the smoker USA', who I finally got to meet in 2017.
This 2011 feature in the New York Times – Now in Brooklyn, Homegrown Tobacco: Local, Rebellious and Tax Free – is a great introduction to a fearless campaigner.
Reader Comments (2)
There are no words left for the persecution we’ve had to endure at the hands of these nanny politicians who claim everyone loves their policies. Bingo halls – which benefited charities -- are a good measure for that. They were included at this point. Within two years of the ban not one still existed in the 5 boroughs of NYC.
Smoking bans are based on poor science and outright anti-smoker bias. The alleged risk from second hand smoke is a red herring. No study supports the anti-smoker bias and many falsify or manipulate the data to reach the prohibitionist end. Third hand smoke claims are based on even more fantasy than second hand smoke claims. Now, outdoor bans are all the rage but there is no science to support the draconian intervention⏤there never was. I don't know how to reverse course, but smoking bans ae an affront to liberty and yield outright oppression.