Report from the front line

This lunchtime I was discussing the impact of the smoking ban with a licensee. While hers is not the kind of pub that will really be threatened by the ban, and even before had been mostly non-smoking, she said that there had been a noticeable drop-off in the “vault trade”.

A customer said he had recently been in a pub in Keighley. He had asked whether there was anywhere to go to have a cigarette. The only place was out in the street, right on a busy road junction. The licensee had said “this place will be shut down in a couple of months”.