I was on LBC last night.
It was very late, after midnight, when I was interviewed by Ben Kentish about the Government’s plan to extend the smoking ban to outdoor areas including beer gardens.
I was told we were going to discuss the backlash, which is still being reported two weeks after the plan was revealed by The Sun, and I prepped to talk about the reaction from publicans, commentators, and politicians such as Labour’s Mary Glindon.
Instead, the discussion stuck to the merits or otherwise of an outdoor ban, with Kentish playing (quite rightly in a single person interview) the part of devil’s advocate.
There were two areas where I came a little unstuck, and began to waffle.
First, he pushed me on why, if I believe that adults should be allowed to smoke (given that it gives many people pleasure), other drugs - such as cannabis, cocaine, and heroin - shouldn’t be legalised or tolerated as well.
It’s a fair point, and one I have always struggled to answer because I am aware of the inconsistency, although I am also aware of the terrible impact heroin addiction can have on individuals and families so I wouldn't like to see heroin, in particular, legalised.
In the limited time we had I restricted myself to saying that, unlike the illegal drugs he mentioned, smoking tobacco isn’t mind altering and doesn’t affect your ability to do your job.
(I could have added, as another example, that you can smoke a cigarette and drive without being a danger to other people, but the same can’t be said of those other drugs.)
He also raised the issue of seatbelts, which were made compulsory by Margaret Thatcher’s government in the Eighties. It’s an old argument but the gist of it is this.
People opposed the compulsory use of seatbelts at the time but few people object to it today because they’ve saved lives, so what’s the problem with banning smoking if that saves lives too by ‘encouraging’ smokers to quit.
Again, I got myself in a bit of a tangle because, while I do think it’s wrong that wearing seatbelts is compulsory, I’m conscious that it makes me sound a bit of a flat Earther to say so and I didn't want to go down that cul-de-sac.
Decades later I don’t think it helps to revisit that debate, so instead I pointed out that wearing a seatbelt doesn’t change your lifestyle in a way that smoking bans do, so the two are not the same.
In truth, the seatbelt law was less of an issue that it might have been because of the gradual adoption of inertia reel seatbelts that allowed for some movement, unlike the early seatbelts that strapped both the driver and front seat passenger firmly in place, rather like the seatbelt on an aeroplane but with an additional immovable strap across your chest.
Anyway, I thought Ben Kentish asked some interesting probing questions that I hadn’t fully anticipated at that time of night!
He did eventually agree/sympathise with one of my points, but I can’t remember what it was. By then it was very late and I just wanted to go to bed!