hot water takes

Hot Water Takes: Smoking in pub gardens

It's open season on cigarette smokers in Britain

Adam Cecil

Adam Cecil

— 3 min read
Hot Water Takes: Smoking in pub gardens

I grew up in a glorious age of American propaganda that succeeded in drastically reducing teen smoking. Teen dramas were interrupted with graphic advertisements showing lifelong smokers with holes in their necks, voice boxes and lower jaws removed, tar-ridden lungs cut out, and they all worked on me. Outside of a cigarillo on a cold winter’s day in New York back in 2011, I’ve never smoked tobacco.

Despite strict laws banning indoor smoking and tobacco advertising—going so far as to force all cigarettes into standardized cartons featuring anti-smoking messaging—smoking is more prevalent in the UK than in the US, especially if you frequent the pub. Smoking is banned indoors, as I mentioned, but not in the pub garden, which is where you’ll want to be during the warm summer months when a lack of A/C and airflow make for oppressive indoor conditions. That’s also where the smokers go, of course, relegated to sidewalks and backyards under a separate oppressive regime.

Here’s my Hot Water Take™: I do not want to share this space with smokers. I’m trying to sit with my pint and enjoy the breeze when the air suddenly betrays me, delivering a cloud of secondhand smoke to taint the evening.

Luckily, Britain’s new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is also a square like me and has proposed banning smoking in pub gardens (in addition to continuing the previous government’s plans to completely ban cigarette sales for anyone born after 2009). He’s a braver man than me—just months after winning the general election, Starmer's government is already hated by the majority of Britons who believe, not entirely incorrectly, that he’s out to raise their already high taxes. And, sure enough, the proposed ban is already proving controversial among a broad swath of young pub-goers and middle-aged geezers alike who see Starmer as speedrunning 1984.

@carbdiem on Twitter: "Banning smoking outside of clubs when we are experiencing low birth rates and an apparent male loneliness epidemic??? Does Keir not realise how many rendezvous start in the smoking area of a nightclub????"
@SarahDuggers on Twitter: "HOW IS ANYONE EVER GOING TO GET LAID IF THEY CAN'T ASK TO BORROW A LIGHTER NOW."
@imshanereaction on Twitter: "If they ban smoking outdoors and we no longer have smoking areas in clubs where are we supposed to go when they play Shape Of You by Ed Sheeran"
@alexkingofnorth on Twitter: an image of two women smoking outdoors, with Keir Starmer photoshopped in front. Caption: "Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?"
@EstherMcVey1 on Twitter: "First they came for the Communists / And I did not speak out / Because I was not a communist / Then they came for the Jews / And I did not speak out / Because I was not a Jew / Then they came for me / And there was no one left / To speak out for me. Pertinent words re Starmer's smoking ban"

Starmer may have landed in hot water with a coalition of horny millennials and right-wing politicians, but I stand with my exceedingly boring Prime Minister, as long as he understands that even I have my limit:

@FFS_WhatNow on Twitter: "Anyone caught having more than one Greggs per week will be sentenced to life imprisonment"

Heed my warning, Starmer—you do not want to come for my vegan sausage rolls.

Do you have a Hot Water Take? Brave enough to share it with the Night Water community? Throw it in the comments! Let's see who lands in hot water! (Say that last line like a TV game show host.)

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