Smoking in London
Prohibitive Inclinations
Lighting up at a London pub is now a hot-button issue. Patrick Allegri finds out what new laws will do, and what Londoners think of them...
On a deserted post-lunch-hour Monday in a Notting Hill pub, Brian looks right at home. He is sitting in the close-to-empty Old Swan, scribbling away in a pad, almost reverently nursing a beer, with whispers of silver smoke rising softly from his just-finished Marlboro. He is as natural in the setting as a barstool.
Natural or not, Brian's time is running out. He says he's held this routine, a smoke and a drink during lunch hour, for 40 years. But, starting next year, smokers like Brian may be welcome in the Old Swan (or any other pub), and their beers may still be waiting, but the cigarettes will have to go.
"I suppose it's inevitable," Brian said. "If most people want no smoking in pubs, then in a democracy you have to accept that."
Whether or not most people do in fact want to rid all pubs and clubs of smoking, a 200 person majority of MPs did on February 14th (2006), when they voted 384 to 184 to pass a bill that will make Brian's lunch hour cigarette at the local bar a thing of the past.
Like Ireland, Italy, Norway, Cuba, and a handful of American cities before it, starting next summer, England will ban smoking from all pubs and clubs, public and private.
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