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Friday, September 6, 2024 at 8:20 Several people have asked if Forest is going to organise a petition against the Government’s plan to extend the smoking ban to pub gardens and other outdoor areas.
As I’ve said before, I'm not a huge fan of petitions because experience has taught me that they rarely make a difference, even if they go viral or attract hundreds of thousands of signatories.
I know because Forest has done it. Our petition against plain packaging raised over 250k signatories but we had to hire a company to organise street petitions throughout the country and that came at enormous cost.
Before that, and with little money to promote it, an online petition calling for an amendment to the indoor smoking ban attracted just 5,000 signatories.
It could be argued that the Hands Off Our Packs petition did help postpone legislation, and I would be delighted to achieve even that modest ambition today, but we simply don’t have the funds to conduct a street petition on that scale - or any scale.
A couple of days ago however I was alerted to a petition on Change.org.
It’s reasonably well argued so I've signed it, but (at the time of writing) it only has 279 signatories so I fear it will suffer the same fate as most petitions.
Nevertheless, if you wish to sign it too, here’s the link.
Reader Comments (1)
Petitions are pointless when extremists rule and will force through anti smoker legislation by any means. They ignore massive numbers unless they are in their favour.
An army of people protesting outside parliament would be better but it's too much to hope for. Government knows that smokers are pushovers, and easy to push around and many put up with it without complaint.
Meanwhile I already sense that pubs will throw us under the bus as they did last time with indoor bans, instead of fighting for their best customers.
Apparently pleas are being made to govt to cut beer tax if smokers are banned from beer gardens when instead they should be declaring that this time they will defy the law. If only they would stand up for us. More pubs will die because of this Draconian ban, less beer tax or not. If pubs don't wake up and do something, they won't be exist for much longer. Two birds one stone would suit the extremist health freaks perfectly.