Davern’s case for pub smokers is extra light and easily stubbed out

By Noel Whelan

He argued that an all-out ban on smoking in pubs would be "too much of a culture shock".

When the Minister for Health Michael Martin announced that he would introduce this complete ban from January 1 next I just felt it in my bones that, eventually, there would be pressure to have the minister's decision reversed.

The main losers when the minster's ban comes into operation will, of course, be the tobacco industry. The prohibition on smoking in pubs will lead to a reduction in smoking.

There is no doubt about that. However, the tobacco industry in Ireland is clever enough to know that it can't go head-to-head with the Minister for Health on this issue and win.

Few people will have sympathy for an argument that the ban will reduce the profits which the tobacco companies make on the back of smoking addiction.

Across the western world the tobacco industry's strategy has been to deploy private lobbying and legal actions in an effort to stall the march of regulations against smoking. As a fall-back, they have begun systematically exploiting Third World markets where this regulation doesn't exist.

Opposition to the ban on smoking in pubs in Ireland therefore has been left to the publicans. The publicans are a well-organised lobby in this country. They have a powerful cadre of supporters and lobbyists, and some of these are in the Oireachtas.

They sit on both the Government and Opposition benches. They can be expected in the coming weeks to work publicly and privately against the minister's move. They are likely to focus in particular on what they see as the soft underbelly of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party.

Their efforts should be resisted. The publicans are entitled, of course, to make their case. However, their argument deserves to be exposed as shortsighted and selfish. It is selfish because they are putting their own fears about profits above public health needs.

It was sadly ironic that Mr Davern launched his campaign against the minister's ban on the same weekend that there was a public march to Dáil Eireann seeking improvements in cancer care services.

The marchers, who included the various organisations involved in cancer care, are engaged in an honest debate with the Minister for Health about how we should deploy the hundreds of millions we spend on the prevention and treatment of cancer in this country.

However, both the minister and the protesters can be united in their support of the ban on smoking in pubs.

Mr Davern's "cultural" argument for the retention of smoking in pubs pales to insignificance when considered against the damage that smoking and passive smoking does to public health.

There is now a culture of cancer in this country, a tragic pervasive culture that touches between 300 and 350 new victims and their families every week.

When the diagnosis of suspected cancer strikes it terrorises its victims and all who care for them. The onset of cancer is painful to watch; the disease is difficult and expensive to treat. Too often it is fatal.

If we are to tackle and undermine this culture of cancer then we are going to have to change many aspects of Irish life, and the culture of the smoke-filled pub is only the first.

The total ban on smoking in indoor public places is a cheap and effective means of reducing cancer deaths and there is no good reason why pubs should be excluded from this ban.

There is much about cancer that we do not know. The more we understand it the closer we may get to a cure.

However, there is one thing on which all the medical and scientific evidence agrees: tobacco smoking is a major contributing factor to cancer and to cancer related deaths. Those who smoke are more likely to get cancer and more likely to die from it.

Those who drink with smokers and those who are required to work in smoke filled pubs and restaurants are also more likely to get cancer and more likely to die from it.

Similar medical and scientific evidence links smoking as a contributing factor to heart disease. The minster has an obligation to act on the scientific evidence available to him and neither the profit motives of publicans nor the irrational desires of those addicted to tobacco should deflect him from his course.

The publican's opposition is shortsighted because ultimately the concept of smoke- free pubs will make pub life attractive to more patrons: locals and tourists.

We all remember the howls of complaint from publicans especially rural publicans when more stringent drink driving laws were introduced 15 years ago.

They said it would destroy the fabric of rural life and undermine rural pubs. Anyone who has visited their local pub over the weekend, or who cares to visit a property salesroom when a pub is up for auction, will know that rumours of the demise of the rural pub were not just exaggerated, but were downright misleading.

Similarly, when the ban on smoking in cinemas was introduced it was said that people would stay at home to watch movies.

People do watch movies at home but record numbers are also going to smoke-free cinemas. There were also warnings when bingo halls were required to ban smoking that it would be the end of bingo as we know it it didn't happen, bingo thrives.

We should not let the publicans and their mouthpieces mislead us with their talk of ventilation systems being the way forward. I have seen these big, white machines hanging near the ceiling of a few public houses in recent months, or at least I've seen a blurry outline of them through the clouds of cigarette smoke. Ventilation systems are very expensive to install and very expensive to run.

It would take as much effort to police pubs to ensure they have installed the required ventilation systems and that they switch them on as it would to police a ban on smoking.

Mr Davern advanced the bizarre concept of some kind of hermetically sealed smoking area in the middle of the pub into which non-smokers and pub staff wouldn't have to go.

Even if physically possible, this concept shows a marvellous disregard for the licensing laws and the obligation they impose on publicans to supervise and staff their premises.

The new smoking ban in pubs will be largely peer-policed. Those of us who have put up with the rudeness of smokers for far too long will be supported by the law in our efforts to ask them to desist.

Of course it can never be policed completely, but no law can be. Fear of non-compliance is always a bad reason for not making something illegal.

There are many reasons why this ban on smoking in pubs is a good idea. At one level it will enable those of us who want to sit in the comfort of smoke-free air to do so and return home without smoke lingering on our clothes and in our lungs.

Of more significance is the contribution the ban will make to a reduction in the incidence of cancer and heart disease. It's a good idea whose time has come.