The Economist - 4th January 2007
New evidence shows the limits of a smoking ban.
ANYONE who promised, in a boozy fug of new-year righteousness,
to give up smoking in 2007 will have more than just their friends
to egg them on-the government is keen to help too. The National
Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which advises the
National Health Service, has recommended time off for workers to
help them quit, and says that new anti-addiction drugs should be
available on the NHS. On New Year's Day the government
said it would raise the legal age for buying cigarettes from 16 to
18 in October. The biggest change is the imminent ban on smoking in
public places, such as pubs and restaurants. A similar prohibition
has existed in Scotland since 2006, and Northern Ireland, Wales and
England will all follow suit this year. Come July, Britain's public
indoor spaces will be a smoke-free zone.
The law is controversial: accusations of nanny-statism and
interference vie with public-health worries and the government's
stated goal of persuading Britons to stub out. It wants smoking
rates to fall to 21% of the population by 2010, compared with 24%
today.
Much of the opposition has been led by pubs, which fear that
smokers will be unable to endure nicotine-free drinking and will
stay at home instead. A new study of the Scottish ban* suggests that their worries are well
founded, at least in the short term: it found a 10% drop in sales
and a 14% fall in customer numbers in the months after the ban.
Happily, evidence from Ireland, which banned workplace smoking
(including in pubs) in 2004, suggests the remaining customers (and
the bar staff) are healthier as a result. Research in pubs shows
that at least some smokers would rather go without their nicotine
hit than huddle outside for a fag. But not all the evidence is so
pleasing. "The ban has cut smoking rates among older people," says
Luke Clancy, the doctor and former Trinity College Dublin professor
who runs ASH, an anti-smoking group. "But it has had less effect on
the young."
Dr Clancy offers two explanations. The ban made little
impression on young teenagers because they do not work and spend
less time than their older peers in pubs, restaurants and other
enclosed public places. Yet this is the group to target, since most
smokers get the habit in their early teens. And official reluctance
to raise tobacco duties (widely regarded as the most effective
disincentive to smoking) in the wake of the ban compounded the
problem. Combined with rapid economic growth, it has made
cigarettes more affordable for young professionals too.
This limited impact on the young will worry British ministers.
British tobacco taxes, although high, have not risen in real terms
for six years. Hiking them would be unpopular, especially after a
ban: John Reid, a former health minister, has described smoking as
one of the "very few pleasures" available to the working classes.
But if ministers are serious about cutting down, they will have to
stiffen their resolve.
*"Short-Run Economic Effects of the Scottish Smoking Ban", by J.
Adda, S. Berlinski and S. Machin, International Journal of
Epidemiology, December 2006