Nouslife: Smoking ban has driven away regulars. But ...

24 August 2006

Smoking ban has driven away regulars. But ...

Of course there may be all sorts of other things to be considered here. First there has been an increasing trend for people to drink at home, perhaps this has accelerated that and things may level off. It is also true that some people like me and my wife are more likely to visit a pub if it's non-smoking. But frankly, we've got used to not going because I hate the smell on my clothes and hair and my wife also has asthma which is exacerbated by cigarette smoke. It would take a while for people like us to re-jig our habits to consider pubbing again.

This is the difficulty with anything that is about restructuring cultural habits; if you look at the figures too early, you get misleading impressions. We will need to be wary of this with things like green taxes; figures suggest that you need at least two years to see the results properly as that kind of time-frame is needed for people to assess impacts in their own life and to turn around habits and to make decisions which often involve significant outlays or other people. So good to read also,

pub companies and industry analysts expressed scepticism ... Mr Patton said it was too early to say what the effect of the ban had been on its pubs in Scotland.

and thinking about the impact when a similar ban hits England,

JD Wetherspoon, which has 650 pubs in Britain, said it was not worried about the impact it would have. "It will hit profits for the first year and a half but you have to think long-term,"