mike55 wrote:

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It's also worth remembering that 'pub' is short for public house, i.e. a house to which the owner chooses to give the public access for the purposes of drinking alcohol. It is a public place, just like a shop or cinema. So John's argument about choice can be turned around to say 'what gives the landlord the right to make a profit from encouraging the public to enter and spend money in an unsafe or dangerous house?'

Well then what about private member's clubs? Surely by definition they are not public they are "private". What gives the government the right to decide their rules for them. Obviously if we were talking about hash or snorting coke then obviously pubs should be fined for allowing this to go on because it is ILLEGAL. But I don't know if you've noticed but smoking is LEGAL and private member's clubs should have the right to decide which LEGAL activities do and don't go on in their property.

The argument about it being their property and they can do what they want, doesn't stack up either, as there are numerous bits of legislation concerning public health & safety that apply to private property to which the public are given access, e.g. fire safety & food safety. Most people accept that it is the proper role of government to legislate for public safety. Every country in the world does this to a greater of lesser extent. This is just the latest. In 10 years everyone, including smokers will have got used to it.

Fair enough, but like I said in my original post, that's not what this is about. This is nothing to do with public health. As I have already asked, please find me this evidence of passive smoking being a major health risk. All of the government's actions have been based on bogus and ficticious statistics which have been peddled at them by ASH, which is full of beauracratic fat cats who would lose jobs if it was revealed that passive smoking is nothing short of fraud.

By the way if ASH is evil and self-serving, what does that make FOREST (who are financed by the tobacco industry)?

Who said anything about FOREST? At what point did I peddle their virtues. Besides, why shouldn't their be an organisation to stick up for smoker's rights? And who else is going to fund them? Naturally it would be the tobacco organisations.

You have a point about exposure levels to substances harmful to health, but I've yet to go into a pub that had the necessary level of ventilation and/or the monitoring equipment. The equipment may be available but nobody has installed it.

And why would they if they have not been told to? No laws have been passed requiring them to, but the ventilation does exist and is in use in some other countries. If the government passed legislation requiring these pubs to use ventilation, then the pubs would have to install it. Simple really.

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After all is said and done, what happened to freedom of choice. There is no reason why people could not be given the choice to go in a smoking bar or a non smoking bar. There could be strong ventilation above the bar area blowing smoke away so bar staff are not worried by the smell or paranoid about phantom "second hand smoke". The way I've always seen it is if the majority of people want no smoking pubs then surely more landlords would have made the change voluntarily and attraced extra custom?