Minister dismisses calls for Scots smoking ban to be extended to outside

AN EAST Lancashire MP has branded a call to extend the smoking ban to pub gardens and public parks as “ludicrous”.

Shirley Cramer, RSPH chief executive, also wants smokers to switch to e-cigarettes.

The last few years have seen a range of smoking bans imposed across the world.

It called for greater promotion of alternatives to cigarettes and measures to make it harder to use tobacco. In a recommendation more focused on the public relations battle, they added that e-cigarettes should be renamed vaporizers or nicotine sticks to detach any association in the public’s mind between regular cigarettes and e-cigarettes.

He said: “We should think back to 2007 before the smoking ban came in, when we were told it would increase the number of people visiting our pubs”.

Ms Cramer said: ‘Over 100,000 people die from smoking-related disease every year in the UK.

Leading medical experts has said that smoking should be banned in beer gardens, parks, open air eating areas of restaurants and outside of school gates sayings that the habit should be seen as abnormal and that tighter controls are imperative for areas where people gather.

It also said that renaming e-cigarettes is not a good idea.

“Decisions on whether to allow smoking in the outdoor areas of pubs and restaurants are a matter for the individual businesses concerned”.

“It won’t stop people smoking, it will simply deter more people from going to the pub and that could lead to even more pub closures”.

“Clearly there are issues in terms of having smokers addicted to nicotine but this would move us on from having a serious and costly public health issue from smoking-related disease to instead address the issue of addiction to a substance which in and of itself is not too dissimilar to caffeine addiction”.

The society said people needed to be educated on the “harmless” nature of nicotine.

Commenting on the potential of a smoking ban being extended, Simon Clark, director of pro-smoking group Forest, said in a statement that, “Banning smoking outside pubs and bars would discriminate against adults who enjoy smoking”.