Kathy Foley

June 10th, 2007

Sandwiches, a flask of tea, chocolate, a few apples, water, a map, a compass and a torch: I’ll need the lot. I’ll probably have to bring a tent and a sleeping bag as well, and I’ll definitely need a pair of hiking boots. Above all, I mustn’t forget my cigarettes and matches.

No, I’m not planning a camping trip. I camped for a night in Pennsylvania in 1997 and the discomfort haunts me still. I’m merely preparing for the day when the only places I can smoke in peace will be remote and uninhabited spots, far from any non-smoker who might catch a whiff of my noxious exhalations.

That day is coming. We already have a ban on smoking in the workplace but now the European Commission is considering the extension of that ban to the doorways of pubs, bus stops and other partially enclosed public areas. This is the point at which sensible public policy tips into control freakery.

I don’t mind not being allowed to smoke in pubs. I do mind not being allowed to smoke outside them. Where, precisely, is the public health risk to others in me smoking outside? It might be unpleasant for non-smokers to have to run the gauntlet of smoke on the way into a pub, but it’s not going to do them any lasting damage. “Oooh, but it smells horrible,” they whine. Fine, but if the authorities are going to start banning behaviour on olfactory grounds, they must also insist everyone showers twice a day and nobody farts in public.

If these regulations are brought into law, pub doorways and bus stops will join a long list of places where we won’t be allowed smoke. Soon we won’t be allowed to smoke in our own cars. Admittedly, that’s because rummaging for a cigarette and then trying to light it while steering the car with your knees as you barrel down the motorway at 120kph is considered dangerous in the context of road safety. I might have to concede that one.

We can’t smoke in our own homes if we happen to live with non-smokers, and we can’t smoke in other people’s homes, even though sometimes they insist we can and that’s just mortifying: “No, you must smoke in here, of course you must. We’re hardly going to make you stand outside the back door. Really, we don’t mind one bit. We’ll just open all the windows in the morning, call in Rent-a-Fumigator and buy an entirely new set of soft furnishings for this room. So, smoke away, please.”

The one glorious haven to which smokers have clung has been the great outdoors but now they’re taking that away from us too. The mooted extension of the smoking ban in Europe is just another step on the insidious creep towards an outright ban on smoking anywhere, any time.

Once outdoor smoking bans begin to be implemented, the no-smoke zone starts to grow in ever–increasing circles. In Tasmania, you can’t smoke within three metres of the entrance to a public building. In Queensland, it’s four, and in California it is six and a half. If a similar law were enacted here, large tracts of Dublin city centre would be no-go areas for smokers.

I won’t be in the least surprised to find some day that smoking within five metres of a non-smoker has been banned. Short of all us smokers wearing red hats or t-shirts emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, we’ll have no way of knowing if any bystanders are non-smokers. We will only be able to smoke in deserted locales – the middle of a vast field or the top of a mountain. Like lepers, we’ll be banished, forced to wheeze our way into the wilderness just so we can have a puff without offending the delicate sensibilities of non-smokers.

I may sound slightly hysterical but none of this is fantasy. The city of Calabasas, in Los Angeles county, has already enacted an outright ban on smoking outdoors. In Bhutan, smoking has been outlawed altogether. Any local who wants to pop out for a fag needs their passport to do so.

I can see that happening here. Ireland is not such a big country. Even if smoking isn’t entirely banned, some day all of the non-smoking areas will overlap and there won’t be anywhere left for smokers to go. By that time, most of Europe will be out of bounds too, as will many other places. Prohibition on smoking is already widespread. Countries as diverse as Bermuda, Bangladesh, Uganda and Uruguay already have bans of some sort in place.

Give it 20 years and I’ll be looking back fondly on the days when I used to trek to the middle of the Bog of Allen for a smoke. By then, us smokers will have to trudge off to the most inhospitable corners of the globe to have a legal fag. We won’t be welcome anywhere, apart possibly from the most far-flung reaches of the Siberian steppes or the sweltering dunes of the Sahara.(Note to travel agents: this could be a burgeoning business opportunity. I’d get in early with the tailored packages, “March of the puffers: smokers-only trip to Antarctica! Smoke your brains out! Huskies, sleds and oxygen included. Cigarettes not supplied.”)

Come on you bureaucrats and health fascists. Smoking outdoors hurts nobody but us smokers and that’s our prerogative. It might be a revolting habit but so is picking your nose.

Unfortunately, us smokers are so used to being cast as the bad guys that when authoritarian nannying replaces public health concerns as the driver behind smoking bans, we don’t speak up. We should. Needlessly imposing ever more punitive restrictions on the behaviour of individuals is just plain wrong.

I’m really rather riled up about this. In fact, I need a cigarette. So, excuse me please. I’m just going outside. I may be some time.