AFTER 10 months deliberation officials have ruled a Stourbridge magician’s vanishing lit cigarette trick will not have to disappear.

John Milner, from The House of Magic (UK), Brook Street, has been given limited permission to carry on performing the trick despite the nationwide smoking ban.

John, who is a member of the Inner Magic Circle and International Brotherhood of Magicians, asked Dudley Council whether he could continue to include the trick in his act after the ban on smoking in public places became law in July 2007.

After referring the question to the Local Authorities Coordinating Body on Regulatory Services (LACORS), the council wrote to John on May 30 saying his performance would be exempt from the regulations.

The magician is perplexed by a ruling he cannot demonstrate or rehearse the trick at The House of Magic (UK).

John said: “If anyone in the shop wants to see this trick performed live we will have to step out onto the pavement.”

Source: Halesowen News. Link

Police have expressed concern at the number of smokers who gather outside licensed venues for a puff, believing that the combinations of mobs on the footpath and passers by present the potential for trouble.

He said the lack of facilities pushed smokers out of a controlled environment and on to the street, citing the assault of a 19-year-old man outside popular venue Club 4 Play last Saturday as an example of increased potential for violence.

“For example, outside of Club 4Play is far too crowded. It has the potential to go bad and I can see why that assault from last weekend happened.”

On the occasion Chief Insp Carson alluded to, a man had a glass bottle smashed across his face while standing outside the Moorabool St nightspot. Chief Insp Carson said Club 4 Play owner Scott Mackay was working to address the issue.

Source: Geelong Advertiser. Link

In Ireland last month a piece of news was quietly slipped out through  the back door that you’ve probably not heard about. The number of smokers among the population has RISEN significantly since the introduction of the Irish smoking ban.

The reasons for this should be clear to all but the heavily blinkered. Prohibition simply does not work. Never has done, never will. Drive something underground and it becomes seductively attractive. Lifetime non-smokers are trying ‘that first cigarette’ so they don’t feel left out when accompanying their smoking friends - you see this all the time outside pubs.

This has come as something of an embarrassment to Irish govt health tzars and the likes of ASH-Ireland who are absolutely furious. “These figures clearly show that no progress is being made despite the immense success of our smoking legislation”, commented Prof Luke Clancy of ASH.

How can ASH declare the ban a ’success’ when all it has achieved is to close around a quarter of Ireland’s pubs, removed choice and destroyed that certain social mystique the Irish were once free to enjoy?

Source: The Publican. Link

However, there turned out to be an unintended consequence. Cast outside to huddle in alcoves, crouch under awnings, and shiver in the rain, Huntington smokers have to do something with the remnants of their last drag.

Before the new ordinance hustled smokers outside, there were ashtrays inside. Now, even the most environmentally sensitive of smokers revert to a familiar strategy: drop butt to sidewalk, grind with foot, and walk away. For affected merchants, it is an extra burden to clean up the mess that falls onto the gray area (literally) of city sidewalks.

Source: Herald Dispach. Link

A couple say their home next to a village pub has been “blighted” by the smoking ban and are claiming up to £50,000 for the effect on its value.

Neil and Rachel Mutter moved out of the one-bedroom property behind the Silverton Inn, in Silverton, Devon, claiming “stress and exhaustion”.

Their home, The Old Lodge, can only be reached via a partially covered yard beside the pub - which landlord Shane Radmore turned into a smoking area when the new smoking law came into effect last summer.

But when they decided to leave their home and put it on the market for £185,000 they claimed they were unable to sell it because of the situation which followed the smoking ban.

Mr and Mrs Mutter, who moved out to live with relatives, have now made a county court claim for up to £50,000 for the “diminution in value” of their property.

The couple could not be contacted today, but in a county court statement Mrs Mutter said after the smoking law came into effect, up to 15 people gathered in the yard to smoke.

That happened throughout the pub’s opening times and sometimes past midnight, she said.

To get to their home they had to negotiate a crowd of people, around furniture and a cloud of smoke.

Mrs Mutter aid in her statement that they finally moved out because of the “noise, smell, cigarette butts and smoke”.

Source: 24dash.com. Link

A ban on smoking in American bars has increased the number of accidents apparently caused by drinking and driving.

US jurisdictions with a smoking ban have seen, on average, a nearly 12 percent rise in the number of drink-related accidents at the wheel, researchers say in a paper published in the Journal of Public Economics.

Researchers found that instead of heading to their local bar for a drink and a puff, smokers ventured farther afield in search of a place where lighting up is still allowed.

They may not be drinking more than before but they are certainly driving more - and that’s what is increasing the risk of a crash.

“Our evidence is consistent with two mechanisms — smokers searching for alternative locations to drink within a locality and smokers driving to nearby jurisdictions that allow smoking in bars.”

Source: Motoring.co.za. Link

Theater night protests are a challenge to a mean-spiritied, shortsighted law.

Your March 16 editorial panned our Theater Night performances in bars as “a clever but wrongheaded protest” against Minnesota’s smoking ban and sniffed that this is a medical, not economic, issue. We disagree. Your editorial focused on physical health and made no room for mental health.

After the smoking ban took effect Oct. 1, many small bars, Legions and VFW posts experienced a precipitous drop in income. Bar owners laid off waitresses they had known since childhood. Bartenders quit school after losing hours and tips. Former customers retreated to ice shacks
on frozen Minnesota lakes to drink and smoke alone.

Public health is more than physical health — clean air and pink lungs. It is also about mental health — keeping company and green wallets. People who drink and smoke alone, who lose their jobs and businesses do not live as well or as long. They need help, not ridicule. These people are socially isolated and financially stressed. Social and financial health deserves to be part of our public health
discussion.

Public health pundits grumble that Theater Night disrespects the law and violates its “spirit.” But this law is mean-spirited and disrespects our veterans and small-bar owners. It makes no accommodation for them.

Last spring, the veterans and small bar owners worried they would lose customers. The Legislature assured them they would see more customers when their businesses were smoke-free, a rosy prediction that turned out wrong.

Theater Night is a blessed respite from the economic desert in which some of our small bars were dying. We now have time to address the mistaken assumptions of last spring. We recommend two healthy accommodations for our veterans and small bar owners.

First, our veterans deserve an exemption. They performed valiantly overseas and continue to perform for their communities through charitable giving. But their revenues dried up after Oct. 1. Granting them an exemption will restore those revenues and their charitable giving.

Second, the smoking ban lets scientists study the effects of tobacco smoke as long as their laboratories are ventilated at the rate of 60 cubic feet of air per minute per person. This is a safety standard that our small bar owners are willing to adopt, even at great cost. Granting such an exemption will give them a chance of survival.

Some may be upset by our approach. But all we ask is to be heard on the subject of mental health as an integral component of public health. Until that day, our show will go on.

Source: Start Tribune. Link

The ban on smoking in enclosed public places has caused controversy, but what if you couldn’t smoke in the place where you lived?

Life in a typical mental health unit is not exactly festooned with luxuries. Like all hospitals, they can seem cold, clinical and austere places to many patients.

And life is about to get worse for many of those held in a unit. By 1 July 2008 they must all be smoke-free. Prisons, on the other hand, will remain exempt from the smoking ban.

The move is likely to anger many patients, who are not allowed to leave the unit and are not being punished for any crime. Already three are taking legal action over their right to smoke.

The patients argue the hospital is effectively their home and therefore they should be able to smoke. The new rules even prevent them smoking in the grounds.

“You have the choice to smoke in prison, but not in a mental hospital,” he says. “But prisons are there for punishment, and hospitals are there for treatment.”

“People who use mental health services are twice as likely to smoke as those who do not, and some may use this as a means of coping with distress,” she says.

And there is even an argument that suddenly being made to give up smoking could worsen their problems, suggests Dr Chris Allen, a consultant clinical psychologist.

“If they’re using smoking as a way of assistance to cope with their mental health problems, and then that’s taken away, that could lead to problems being exacerbated.”

Source: BBC News. Link

(Some bar owners, devastated by declining revenues as a direct result of smoking bans, have come up with a clever way to win back their smoking patrons. They declare everything that happens in a bar is a performance, and everyone inside is an actor. The state law allows actors to smoke on stage.)

It’s not exactly the venue you’d envision for a Saturday night performance. But Bugg’s Bar in South St. Paul has become the latest stage for a statement.

“We’re doing it because we’ve lost so much business, and we’re trying to get people back out, trying to get them back in the community, trying to get them back in the bars,” said Crystal Bentson, Manager of Bugg’s Bar.

Patrons at Bugg’s Bar paid two dollars for a sticker entitling them to a role in the bar’s production Saturday night. It also gave them an opportunity to light up, if they desired.
You can call it the second act in an ongoing drama. Turns out, dozens of bars across the state are now treating the smoking ban like a brief intermission.

Kenn Rockler of the Tavern League of Minnesota said he’s heard from more than a hundred bar owners looking for the latest way to deal with a ban they say is bad for business. They think they’ve found it, in a once little known exemption in the state smoking ban that allows smoking in theatrical productions.

“Maybe the people who did the exemption weren’t aware what would happen with it,” Rockler said. “But again, those people are the same people that said businesses wouldn’t suffer.

Rockler estimates more than four thousand people have lost their jobs since the ban went into effect on October 1, 2007.

State Senator Kathy Sheran sponsored the law last year, she said the current activity undermines the intention to “protect people from smoke in all of these places.”

“It’s creative, it’s clever, it shows us a loophole in the law that people will want to find their way through,” she said. “But it will require us to find resources to go back.”

(Yeah, damn those hard working business owners who refuse to go out of business. We must punish them!)

Source Kare11. Link

DALBO, Minn. (WCCO) ― A growing number of bars are turning into temporary theaters to take advantage of a loophole in the smoking ban law.

The Dusty Eagle is the only bar in Dalbo. Since the smoking ban, business has gone down there 30 to 40 percent. The owners are trying something new to attract business. They’re taking a cue from an old TV show to bring back some familiar faces. Last Saturday night, an actual local mail carrier was playing “Cliff Claven” from “Cheers”.

Though there is some performance, no one there at “theater night” is a professional actor. For last Saturday night, the entire bar was being considered a stage and pretend “actors” were smoking as part of the “show”. The Dusty Eagle is just one of the bars using “theater night” to get around the smoking ban.

Judy Cassman, the bar’s owner, is quick to clarify her position.

“We’re not trying to be vindictive, we’re not trying to be sneaky. We’re trying to draw some business and keep a family business going,” said Cassman.

Source: Wcoo.com. Link

Quebec’s public security minister is denying he backtracked on a smoking ban in light of a small riot that broke out at the Orsainville detention centre late Thursday night.

A law prohibiting smoking both inside and outside of Quebec’s 18 prisons went into effect on Tuesday. Just before midnight on Thursday between 30 and 50 prisoners began fighting and set fire to a wing of the Orsainville detention centre just north of Quebec City. The section was evacuated for about an hour while firefighters put out the fire. There were no injuries.

0n Friday, Public Security Minister Jacques Dupuis issued a statement saying prisoners would be allowed to smoke outside - an activity that was prohibited under the ban.

Source: Canada.com. Link

Violence in pubs in Preston city centre is being pushed on to the streets because of the controversial smoking ban, police warned today.

Insp Steve Evans said the sudden increase of smokers lighting up outside pubs and restaurants since the ban on July 1 last year has “provoked” trouble in the city centre.

He warned innocent smokers could fall prey to yobs intent on causing trouble by picking fights in the street.

And today, Lancaster police chief, Chief Supt Tim Jacques, said the ban has meant more people are staying at home to drink, sparking more violence in homes and neighbourhoods in the city.

“It stands to reason. If there are 20 people stood outside in the street, someone walking the streets looking for trouble has more people to encounter and a bigger choice.”

He added: “We are not saying smokers are responsible for violent behaviour - but those people stood outside having cigarettes would normally have been in pubs and not encountered the troublemaker.”

Ronnie Fitzpatrick, landlord of the Dog and Partridge, Friargate, Preston, said: “I think there is less tension in pubs because there is more room - the smokers are outside so not as many people bump into each other, which was often a source for trouble.”

Source: Lep.co. Link

“I’ve been loving every minute of it,” said third-year Ashley Meyer wryly as she puffed on a cigarette outside Bar Louie. “You’re drinking your beer, and you have to leave it and go outside into this freezing blizzard.”

“I just don’t get this law,” she added. “I mean, people don’t go to bars for their health.”

Another frequent complaint among students has been the loss of a smoker culture that, until recently, cheerfully lived on in Chicago’s bars.

“It makes for a particular social bond, but now everyone’s having fun and you have to go outside in a self-imposed exile for 10 minutes. Sometimes you feel pathetic,” fourth-year John Elias said. (That is the real purpose of the ban, John.To make you a pariah and feel like a second-class citizen.)

The Cove has also seen a decrease in patronage as a result of the new act. Shawn Sleeper, a bouncer at The Cove, said the ban has resulted in a 25 percent decrease in sales at the bar, a number he attributes to patrons being less inclined to smoke out in the cold. But new problems may arise come summer.

“There’ll be more people out here, smoking, laughing, making noise and then the neighbors start complaining and that’s bad for business,” Sleeper said. He added that the Cove has already been hit with a number of fines for similar reasons in the past few years.

Christopher, a second-year who declined to give his last name, is an occasional bartender at The Cove and a frequent customer of neighborhood bars.

“Before, there were plenty of bars that were non-smoking,” he said. “And that was a choice you made before you went out. Unfortunately now, [the state] has taken the choice away from us.”

Lawmakers in other states have said they passed these laws out of concern not only for the non-smoking patrons of bars and restaurants but for the waitstaff and other employees who were forced to inhale the smoke of others. The latter claim in particular is one with which Christopher takes issue.

“Most people who work here smoke,” he said. “When I did bartend, I smoked a fair amount while I was working. It’s something that most employees participate in.”

But fourth-year Josh Hemley sympathizes with both sides of the debate.
“It’s nice to be in a bar without smoke in your face,” he said. “But I smoke too, so it’s like your mother telling you to eat your vegetables: It’s good and it’s bad.” (No, it’s just bad. It’s good when your mom does it. It’s bad when Big Brother Does it.)

Source: Chicago Maroon. Link

(Finally, a story on this page to make you smile.)

The minister behind the smoking ban has been forced to move office because of the number of smokers congregating outside her window.

Caroline Flint, health minister when the smoking ban came into force and now welfare minister, said the smell of smoke coming through her window was “overpowering”, according to the Mail on Sunday.

Her husband and office manager Phil Cole told the paper: “There was some kind of ventilation system that we could not close off, so even with the windows closed the smoke kept coming in.”

Flint has asked for a review of the four designated outdoor smoking areas in the courtyard of the Palace of Westminster.

The number of pints served in Britain’s pubs and bars in the run-up to the busy festive period declined by almost 10% as chilly smokers, no longer allowed a cigarette inside a pub, cut short their drinking time or stayed at home.

Pub bosses expected the ban to hit hardest in winter but the November decline is by far the steepest since the restrictions were extended from Scotland into Wales and England last year. UK beer sales in August, the second month of the nationwide ban, were down just 2.5%.

The November figures followed falls of 8.2% and 7.7% for September and October respectively and appeared to hit every type of beer. “All categories fell - there was nowhere to hide,” said Mark Brumby, an analyst at Blue Oar Securities. “Premium ale was down 6.9%, standard ale 9.6%, standard lager 10.4%, premium lager 8.3% and stout 10.6%.”

Source: The Guardian. Link

Since the ban on smoking came into force in England in July, councillors, pub landlords and environmental campaigners said that the litter problem had increased sharply in East Lancashire.

It is said to be particularly on Saturday and Sunday mornings after the weekend nights out, when streets outside pubs are littered with discarded cigarettes.

But it is not just the night-time economy that is affected - the outsides of many offices and workplaces have similar piles of fag ends.

Mr Southam said: “Unfortunately it’s one of these things that the Government dictate to the country without thinking about the consequences on everybody.”

Source: This Is Lancashire. Link

Licensees in South Devon have blamed the smoking ban for an increase in rowdy behaviour and noise.

“There have been more fights and problems since the ban than in the last eight years,” Kelly Townsend of the Old Coaching House told the Herald Express.

“In the last six months we have had to call the police three or four times and we have had to break up a lot of fights. It happens at least once a week and all the trouble starts out the back in the smoking area.

He added: “Because all smokers now have to share the same area to smoke in, we are seeing higher levels of aggression from groups of people who would not normally have anything to do with each other, but now have to sit together for a smoke.”

Source: Morning Advertiser. Link

The main reason the ban has been bad for the environment is because of pubs’ and bars’ efforts to make smokers more comfortable when they head outside to light up. There has been a significant increase in the number of patio heaters in bars, pubs, and restaurants throughout the UK.

Because of the UK’s generally cold weather, the patio heaters are used an average of 237 days a year. This is the amount of time the temperature is below 15 degrees Celsius.
Environmental groups predict that pub and restaurant patio heaters will produce around 282,000 tons of emissions per year now. That’s a 260,000 ton increase over pre-ban numbers.

Some groups are calling for the patio heaters themselves to be banned in an effort to fight the negative environmental impact they have.

(Congratulations to them for not using the phrase “Global Warming” in this article.)

Source: environmentalgraffiti.com

Pubs are likely to pump hundreds of thousands of tons of additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as a result of the smoking ban.

Policy advisers predict that emissions from patio heaters in pubs and restaurants will increase from 22,200 tons of greenhouse gases a year to up to 282,000 tons - the equivalent of flying a jumbo jet 171 times around the Earth.

Heaters will be used for more than 237 days a year, when outdoor temperatures are lower than 15C, says the report, from Market Transformation. A further 80,000 tons of carbon dioxide will be produced next year by patio heaters in private gardens, according to an earlier study by the Energy Saving Trust.

Environmentalists say the heaters must now be banned if Britain is to meet carbon dioxide emission targets.

Tony Juniper, of Friends of the Earth, said: “The impacts of the smoking ban are positive, but this should not cause more problems for the environment. Either smokers will have to give up smoking or simply put on a jumper.”

(I’ve got a better idea. Let’s set Tony and his FOE friends on fire, solving two problems at once.)

Source: Telegraph.co.uk. Link

I AM a professional musician of some 30 years, playing in bars and clubs, and have been dismayed by the effect of the smoking ban. Whereas we were promised that the grateful customers would flock to premises providing a smoke-free environment, the reality has been that I have been playing in mostly empty bars, while the few customers left have been shivering outside in the rain and cold.

I have never seen such a collapse in trade, which happened immediately after the ban and has not improved since. This ill thought out law has destroyed social life in this country at a stoke, as people decide to stay at home, guzzling cheap supermarket alcohol and no doubt smoking in front of their children. I have no problem with restrictions on smoking in shops and other public places, but a total ban in pubs, forcing people to sit outside in the wet and freezing cold, while being denied adequate shelter is surely unreasonable.

Most people I know are upset and angry about this ban, and if it is not reversed it will lead to the demise of many premises which have previously been the hub of the community.

Source: Gazette, Internet Edition. Link

More pubs are resorting to strippers and exotic dance nights to pull in badly-needed trade as the economy worsens and the smoking ban begins to bite.

Striptease and entertainment agencies say enquiries from pubs and clubs have significantly increased over the past six months.

Dawn Pugsley, from Angels Exotic in Windsor, Berkshire, said hard-pressed hosts were turning to strippers to entice drinkers through the door.

“We are getting a lot more enquiries from pubs and the numbers have risen sharply over the past few months or so. Licensees are telling me they are being forced to look at alternative forms of entertainment because they are struggling so badly,” she said.

“More licensees are looking at these sort of nights, especially since the smoking ban began to hit trade.”

Source: Morning Advertiser. Link

Pubs across the country are facing legal showdowns with councils over issues arising from the smoking ban.

Following The Publican’s exclusive story last week on Chelmsford licensee Jeff Castledine, more licensees have come forward telling of their harsh treatment from their local authorities.

Noise from smokers outside pubs is the main issue causing licensees headaches.

The letter sent to Ashley states: “As the interview will be tape recorded in accordance with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 you may bring a legal representative/solicitor with you. The maximum penalty for breaching license conditions is £20,000 and or 6 months imprisonment.”

Another licensee, who wished to remain anonymous, has been sent a letter by his council saying it is “monitoring the situation” over noise outside his pub.

He said he is facing a “catch-22” over what do to with his outdoor area. “I’m being challenged to put in heaters outside, but I’m loath to make the area more comfortable because there is more chance of noise,” he said.

Source: The Publican. Link

Whitby mental health patients forced offsite, leading neighbours to complain about loitering

He’s 53, with sad eyes and not much to look forward to. One of his few pleasures in life is a coffee and cigarette.

But the Whitby Mental Health Centre, his home for the past 10 years, wants to deny him that in the interests of “recovering best health.”

Translation: no smoking anywhere in the hospital or its 32-hectare waterfront property.

“It’s very, very frustrating,” he says, cigarette in one hand, foam cup in the other, in a small, town-owned parking lot a five-minute walk away.

“They’re telling me to quit. I don’t want to. I’ve been smoking for 40 years.”

He says he makes the long walk across the grounds 20 to 30 times a day. “I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

The smoking ban, implemented last June, has raised the ire of area residents and the Whitby Yacht Club, whose driveway runs past the parking lot where patients and staff congregate.

They complain of litter, butts and public urination. Some are intimidated by the “crazies,” as one sailor described patients.

“It’s a little bit threatening when it’s a whole load of people loitering around out there,” says the club’s vice-commodore Jim McMaster, adding they have concerns over fire risks and their boats’ security.

“Something has to be done. I understand … that they don’t want people smoking but you don’t force them off your property and onto someone else’s because you can’t figure out how to deal with them.”

The ban, imposed on the hospital’s 330 in-patients, 1,000 staff members, outpatients and visitors, is part of their mission to help patients become healthy and reintegrate into the community, says president and CEO Glenna Raymond. She adds statistics are “staggering” for smoking-related illnesses in the mental health sector.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Raymond says of the no-smoking policy, put in place after months of study.

“But it was the right move to make.”

(Yeah, why should your mentally ill patients be allowed any comforts that aren’t politicaly correct?)

An “unintended consequence” was the stigma around mental illness that’s surfaced in the community, Raymond says. Patients may not be ready for independent living but they pose no threat and “there’s no reason to confine them.” They have as much right to smoke in the community as anyone, she says.

That stance angers Whitby Councillor Elizabeth Roy and the “numerous” residents who have complained about encounters with patients near their homes, in a park and along a waterfront trail. Their quarrel is with the facility, not its occupants, she says.

“The fault goes back to the hospital, which is pushing patients and staff away from the facility into the community,” says Roy. “The solution is to give them a designated area” as other health facilities do.

That won’t happen, says Raymond. While the hospital is “committed to being a good neighbour,” a smoking shelter would run “contradictory to the aims of the policy.”

(Her policy of being a sanctimonious nanny, no doubt.)

But one patient says it’s difficult to concentrate in his group therapy when he’s worrying about when he’ll get his next cigarette.

Then there’s the problem of the cigarettes themselves. “They’re confiscated if we have them in the hospital. We’re supposed to hide them outside, off the property.”

It all combines to make a difficult life that much more trying, says a heavy smoker.
“We just want to have a cigarette.”

(Does this strike anyone else as just being nasty for the sheer joy of it? Evidently Glenna Raymond, nees to feed her power trip on the backs of the mentally ill patients she’s supposed to care for, but obviously doesn’t care about.)

Source: The Star.com.  Link

ALMOST 70 per cent of North West councils have suffered a surge in cigarette litter on their streets since the smoking ban was introduced.

That’s according to Keep Britain Tidy, which today revealed the amount of cigarette ends blighting our streets shot up by 43 per cent since the start of the ban.

Link

Since the smoking ban came into force on July the 1st, smokers are spending over 20 extra hours outside each month so putting themselves at greater risk of skin damage.
Research from Boots shows that an alarming 60% of British sunburn cases occur on home turf, a figure set to rise with the smoking ban taking more people outdoors.

To help prevent the Smoker’s Burn phenomena, the UK’s leading health and beauty retailer has teamed up with the Laurel Pub Company to offer £300,000 worth of free sun cream to punters across the UK.

Since the smoking ban came into force on July the 1st, smokers are spending over 20 extra hours outside each month so putting themselves at greater risk of skin damage.
Research from Boots shows that an alarming 60% of British sunburn cases occur on home turf, a figure set to rise with the smoking ban taking more people outdoors.

(I consider this a very silly story, and published it here just for fun. It does, however, show how nannies of all flavors freak out at the tiniest increase in any risk.)

Source: GMTV. Link