Goodness me. I've heard some excuses for people liking the blanket smoking ban. It used to be about health but since the spiteful law was imposed, it suddenly became about the smell that anti-smokers don't like.
I've followed this propaganda through from the start and smell was an early one they tried to use to get stupid politicians to impose a draconian ban. When I was in my teens, early 20s and before 1997, our politicians weren't so stupid because this argument from the antis was always beaten down.
Our leaders said rightly at the time that if we legislated against all things we didn't like the smell of, there would be little left that we could do. They also said smell was not enough of a reason to take away civil liberties and it must be without doubt proved that passive smoking harms others.
It is only then that the antis set their sights on manipulating scientific data to "prove" their case. Even then they had to wait for the right stupid and prejudicial politicians to come along and NuLab was their gift. I must admit I saw the ban coming when Cherie Blair moved into No 10 and her OCD meant that poor Humphrey the Downing Street Cat got the boot because of her obsessive health phobia. If she thought cats would kill her then I guessed she would also be a smokerphobic and Tony did what the Mrs told him, after all.
While debating the smoking ban the other day with some colleagues, I found that one of them, an occasional smoker, was completely against the smoking ban and wished me well with my endeavours. In fact most people I speak to on a daily basis, both smokers and non-smokers agree choice, balance, and respect for both sides of this debate, is the right way forward. Only the anti-smokers and phobics would deny the smoker the right to choose to smoke somewhere they are not.
The reason another of my colleagues gave me for why he loved the ban was because he didn't have to hear people coughing anymore. Is this reason six million and ninety two for them to hate us even more? As an excuse for maintaining the blanket smoking ban without any amendment to allow for choice, it's one I'd never heard before, and one of the most disgusting.