I would say it is very normal in a city to sit round inhaling car fumes, particularly during rush hour.

And Mark is right - tobacco smoke may be annoying to some, but the notion that SHS is dangerous is a myth. If you actually read the studies rather than listen to the propaganda soundbites, you'll find that research has found no statistically significant risk from SHS, even in high (as in a busy pub pre-ban) concentrations and / or long (decades) periods of time.

"Hmm. How do we appeal to educated, ethical, health-conscious millennials?"

What, the snowflakes who demand 'safe spaces' and 'trigger warnings' so their delicate sensibilities aren't offended? The ones that are allergic to everything under the sun and who have an asthma attack if they just think about someone smoking? The ones who think that if we all eat quinoa and nut cutlets that we'll save the planet?

It looks to me like your 'educated (?), ethical, health-conscious millennials' are in desperate need of some lessons in life, one of those lessons being how to enjoy some robust debate and banter in a laughter-filled, smoky, heaving pub. Remember those? They used to be heaving and full of laughter before the smoking ban. Now they have all the ambience of a doctor's waiting room.

You've obviously run out of arguments. People like you usually do, because you have nothing sensible to say, merely the propaganda soundbites you've been indoctrinated with, and given that those soundbites rely on emotive coercion rather than fact, when challenged, all you have to fall back on is ad hominem responses. I see it all the time - it's the standard anti-smoker rejoinder.

The smoking ban will fall, because eventually people will realise how comprehensively they've been conned by the charlatans in Tobacco Control. These things tend to run in cycles - the prohibitionist mindset prevails for a while, but eventually people get tired of the whining and moaning about other people's lifestyles.

H.L. Mencken had the measure of people like you:

"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

This ban helped to save lives.

Can we have some examples, please? Or some hard facts demonstrating that assertion?

No? Thought not.

No, we are all happy with non smoking pubs and the health benefits they have brought.

It's patently obvious to all and sundry that it is emphatically NOT the case that 'we are all happy with non-smoking pubs'. What you actually mean is that YOU are happy with the bans, and sod what anyone else might think.

As for the 'health benefits', they are a figment of the anti-smoker brigade's imagination. All serious studies have found no 'health benefits' whatsoever, just the normal fluctuations that have prevailed both before and after the ban. It's just that the anti-smoker lobby pounce on an unusual lowering of heart disease or whatever in one small town post ban, and the cry goes up "It's a miracle!".

When that same town has a blip in the opposite direction the following year, of course it gets ignored. After all, mustn't let facts get in the way of a good propaganda piece, eh?

If you actually take the time to look into it, you'll find that all these so-called 'miracles' that the anti-smoking lobby shout about are in fact nothing of the sort. Hot air and hyperbole, nothing else.

So, we lost 15,000 pubs between 1969 and 2003. That, by my reckoning, is 34 years. In the period between 2007 and 2017 (which if I'm not mistaken is less than a third of the time between '69 and '03), we have lost 17,000 pubs, clubs and related businesses (bingo halls etc) that used to cater to the general public. That rather suggests that there was a catastrophic decline of pubs in very short order, directly as a result of the smoking ban. In fact according to figures I've read, the rate of pubs closing quadrupled immediately in the wake of the smoking ban.

And as for the 'low supermarket prices' codswallop that is dragged out ad nauseam by people desperate to find a reason, any reason why 'it wasn't the smoking ban wot dun it', I remember back in the '60s when I was broke and in a bedsit in London that when I couldn't afford to go to the pub, if I wanted a beer, I could get one from the corner store or the off-licence for a much lower price than pub prices. That is something that has not changed in my lifetime. If you can remember a time when pubs were cheaper than supermarkets, then please enlighten us.

As for coffee, I'll only stop for a coffee if they have outside seating and the weather is clement. And it isn't Star*ucks.

The bulk of commenters here seem to have missed the point by such a wide margin, I'm wondering if they're on the same page as me.

Rob Lyons isn't suggesting that all areas in all pubs must allow smoking. In fact he makes the point that there are two very different approaches to polling on the subject. The polls commissioned by those in the anti-smoking lobby only give a binary choice - all smoking or all non-smoking. Obviously with the majority of respondents being non-smokers, the results are always going to be for maintaining the current status quo.

However, when the polls are more nuanced, as in "should pubs be allowed well ventilated smoking areas / rooms inside, then the results are very different, with the majority of people (which of course includes a lot of non-smokers) saying that such a provision should be allowed.

The smoking ban as it stands is draconian, unreasonable and takes no account of the fact that before the ban, something like 60% of regular pub-goers were also smokers (hence the decimation of the pub industry post July 2007). There were many solutions to looking after the needs of non-smokers that could have been applied.

Separate smoking rooms.

Good air scrubbing installations (I've been in places pre-ban that had state-of-the-art ventilation systems installed, and despite most people in there being smokers, you wouldn't have known anyone had ever smoked a cigarette in the room).

Designated smoking pubs and non-smoking pubs. So you don't like smoking, and the pub door has a sign on the door "SMOKING ALLOWED". So you go to the pub up the road; the one which has the sign "NO SMOKING INSIDE". Now that's not so difficult, is it? You can wear your underwear for an extra few days and not wash your hair for a week. What's not to like? Meanwhile, the smokers can hang out in their stinking, smoky bars and have to 'scrape the stink off themselves when they get home'. Job done. Everyone is catered for, and there are no problems, eh?

Or is it just that anti-smokers want to be able to go into every bar if they want (but mostly don't want) to, so everyone has to change to suit them? That seems to me to be an extremely selfish attitude, along the lines of the 'dog in the manger' parable.

There is no good reason to continue with the moronic blanket smoking bans, and every reason to relax the law to allow pubs to establish either ventilated smoking rooms within a pub, or have separate 'smokers only' pubs. To object to that is just sheer petty spite. Why on earth should smokers be completely denied any choice whatsoever?

I can assure you that jackmatson123 is in no way associated with the tobacco industry. The reason he mostly posts on this one topic is because he, like many of us, is sick to death with being on the wrong end of a multi-billion dollar propaganda machine which seeks to punish and stigmatise a not inconsiderable percentage of the population for the simple reason that they, the propagandists, are ideologically opposed to smoking. There is ample evidence to show that the anti-tobacco groups lie and deceive as a matter of course. They commission 'research' in the sure knowledge that he who pays the piper calls the tune. They have access to massive funding - the tobacco companies couldn't even dream of being able to afford the sort of budgets that Tobacco Control throw at lobbying governments to get legislation passed to suit their agenda. The second-hand smoke myth is one of the biggest cons ever perpetrated, and it was created with the specific intention of marginalising smokers. Sir Charles Godber, a fanatical anti-smoking zealot suggested in the 1970s that their movement needed to foster the impression that smokers were not just risking their own health, but risking the health of those around them. And so the SHS myth was born.

This is the Anna Soubry who scuttled off to the EU without consultation, bypassing all scrutiny and signed a directive about which she was supremely ignorant but which will affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. When grilled about it by the European Scrutiny Committee, she had to be constantly prompted by her DoH handler, as she didn't have a clue what she was talking about. See: http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.gr/2013/07/anna-so...

She should have been sacked back then, preferably never to be heard of again.

Yes, you have hit the nail on the head. Their role should be disease control, not mandating lifestyle choices. As Mr Deane points out, if we culled the lot of them, we would be three billion quid better off, a lot happier for not being constantly guilt tripped about the epidemic du jour, and just as healthy. They are parasites feeding off us all, and self-righteous parasites at that, which is even worse.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. -- C S Lewis

According to the NHS figures (which are doubtlessly exaggerated), 'smoking related' diseases cost the NHS something like 2.7 billion pa. Annual tax revenues from tobacco bring the treasury about 11 billion pa.