Posted on 03/28/2004 11:53:37 PM PST by Eurotwit
Most of the articles written about the ban on smoking in the workplace, introduced in Ireland last night, have been light-hearted in tone. They have focused on the sheer incongruity of imposing such a ban in the homeland of James Joyce and Flann O'Brien, where the smoke-filled bar is so much a part of the national culture.
Britons would be foolish, however, to laugh too heartily about the ban. What has happened in Ireland is a very serious assault on the civil liberties of a substantial minority of the population. Many hundreds of thousands of smokers - a quarter of the adult population, according to the Irish government's own figures - are being denied one of the great pleasures of their lives by nannying politicians who have paid not the slightest heed to their wishes.
Nobody is denying that there are many people who dislike the smell of tobacco, or that it is wrong that they should be expected to endure the company of smokers against their will. It may even be true - although the evidence is not nearly as strong as the anti-smoking lobby pretends - that inhaling second-hand tobacco smoke is dangerous to the health of non-smokers.
The answer to that is to ban smoking in bars and restaurants whose staff and customers do not like it, and to allow it in those where they do not mind. But, instead, Irish politicians have chosen to impose a blanket ban on smoking in all places of work, with only a very few exceptions.
Other politicians throughout Europe will be watching the Irish experiment closely. You can be sure that if the Irish surrender to the new law without a strong show of resistance, it will not be long before a similar ban is introduced in Britain.
So Irish smokers have a responsibility to freedom-lovers everywhere to make their displeasure felt. They have already come up with some ingenious suggestions for exploiting loopholes in the new law. We wish them luck in finding more.
We note that prisons are among the very few workplaces exempted from the ban. So anyone incarcerated in the cause of freedom will at least be allowed the consolation of a smoke.
Don't follow the rest of the Euro-peons into the Belgiumized ooze!!
Whenever I stop for a well-deserved adult beverage in a saloon after a hard days' work, I always order a Crown-Royal-and Soda - double, and while the bartender is mixing it, I light-up my usual Merit Ultra-Light.
When they tell me I can't smoke, I tell them that I have no use for their whiskey, and I leave.
I think of it as passive-up-your-a$$ resistance.
When enough people cram-it to the restaurant industry, they'll beg for a law-change!
Or I might be eating take-out at Tiki-Bars! Who cares?..............FRegards
Carolyn (P.S. My husband and I both quit smoking in 1998.)
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