It’s been almost a week since the most awesomest piece of legislation that is the English ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces.

I can’t believe how completely people have adopted the strict rules. No fighting, no biting, no illicit smoking around the side of the bar or on the dark dance floor. Today I saw a winsome short-order cook, propped on a chair just outside the kitchen door of his workman’s caf (the holy shrine of smokers), puffing away. And ‘No smoking’ signs adhered to every entrance, exit, farmhouse, henhouse, doghouse and outhouse in the city.

People have an amazing tolerance for being told what to do in our town. I was living in Vancouver when their smoking ban was enacted a few years ago, and the reasoning of the government was heath and safety — that people have the right to be protected from smoke in their work environment, just as they do from any other toxic material. An unbeatable argument, if you have even the slightest belief in worker’s rights. But admittedly, it’s a bit of a whitewash of the deeper reasons for a ban.

However, that reasoning is barely touched on by our government, who prefer the more straight-forward, but less defensible, “for god’s sake, it’s f*cking addictive killer smoke, people! What’s wrong with you? It’s banned!” approach. Which I kind of love. But is also scary, in the whole ASBO, being a jerk is now illegal, radio call-in programs about what women can and can’t wear, way.

Not that I believe for one picosecond in the fallacious “choice” of being addicted to smoking, it’s just interesting that the government doesn’t feel that the public health or health and safely reasons are really necessary. Simple moral high ground is sufficient.

But my concerns about the creeping fungus of the police state doesn’t change that, after a lovely lunch spent having a pint and reading the paper (my definition of heaven) at a great local pub, which is usually made unendurable at lunch due to smoke, I say: cheers to the ban!

Image from the Smokefree England website.