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LadyEllen -> RE: Pub landlord is first person in Britain to be jailed over smoking ban Read more: http://www.dai (3/1/2010 7:19:36 AM)
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This health and safety argument for staff is unfortunately not the trump card; there are after all many occupations which deal in hazardous airborne substances for which a mask must be worn. If I wish to cut concrete slabs for my customer's backyard then I wear a protective mask - I do not have the cutting of concrete slabs banned nor insist on my customer taking his slabs home to cut them himself (along with his hand from his wrist perhaps). There is no reason, should smoky workplaces be thought to be as hazardous as some other hazardous workplaces, why staff ought not to be provided with protective equipment.
The smoking ban was ill thought through. It has not stopped anyone smoking on a night out and it has not stopped many of those who do not smoke from being affected by smoke. All it required was for venues that wished to allow smoking to provide an area for it which was separated from the rest of the establishment, rather as with the smoking rooms of old. That many, perhaps most in my experience, venues have had to provide a separate smoking area following the introduction of the legislation in order to cater to their customers, shows that such a halfway house solution could easily have been made and more readily and universally accepted. That when one ventures into these separate facilities one finds not merely smokers but also the smokers' non-smoking friends there, shows that many of those believed to have been protected have not been for they will insist on accompanying their smoking friends - something I have observed in many instances of business meetings, let alone leisure facilities.
As for alcohol, this is a far more dangerous and damaging substance second hand. There are of course the risks of drunk driving, but more than this there is the catalogue of problems here in the UK caused by public intoxication, including random violence to bar staff, other drinkers, the general public, police, ambulance and hospital staff, and random criminal damage to property and general public nuisance. Whilst a smoker may generate problems for others near him with his smoke, should he be so inconsiderate, once his cigarette has been extinguished (five - ten minutes) his anti-social behaviour is ended - since intoxication lasts for several hours, so too do the risks to others arising from intoxication endure.
Indeed, it is this very nature of alcohol and its after effects that led in the first place to such notions as licensing for public venues where it should be available - that is to say separate venues established under law where this dangerous activity ought to be confined so that the dangers to others could be minimised, and separate public order offences where intoxication became an element of the offence - that is to say the offence had a special nature of risking or causing public nuisance due to alcohol having been consumed, not to mention such notions as a landlord being criminally liable for serving children or those already sufficiently intoxicated that they might fall foul of the specially created public order offences.
The general point then is that society and the law has already long since accepted that alcohol is a substance that generates wider criminal problems to others who do not partake. That society and the law is coming more round to the idea that alcohol is a substance that is generating wider health and safety problems to the drinkers and to the wider society will see new legislation before long to control and limit these factors also.
But we must first consider those bar staff who may risk violent assault from serving drinkers, whom we know already are prone to such criminality. The law is very simple - as an employer the landlord must take all reasonable steps to protect his employees, and this must extend to the known risks of assault by drunken customers - bar staff ought as a minimum to be provided with helmets, and perhaps face guards to prevent injury from thrown glassware, gloves and a stab vest.
A landlord failing to provide such protective equipment or failing to ensure his staff wear it at all times, is guilty of causing or permitting unsafe working practices. If it is essential to protect bar staff from the effects of second smoke then there is no reason to suppose that it is not equally essential to protect them from the known effects of second hand intoxication.
Which leaves us as it would appear only two avenues to go down - one to ban the consumption of alcohol anywhere but in the home and the other to permit public drinking venues as now but to insist on the appropriate measures being taken to protect employees at work. If we choose the fomer then it will be criticised rightly as a gross infringement on the majority of considerate drinkers' rights for the sake of controlling a small but sizeable problem drinker population. If we choose the latter then we can have no excuse in not permitting smoking in public venues since the principle has been established that landlords must provide safety equipment and safe working practices in relation to other known risks.
Ultimately however all of this is down to two main influences - the first the trend towards open plan venues and the second, and rather paradoxically perhaps, the trend towards tolerance of others' varying customs - which must lead some to believe that manners no longer matter since they may be, even must be, interpreted so widely as to have become redundant as a system of controlling social behaviour, with the result that "I shall do as I like, and you'd better accept it" displacing ordinary self control and consideration of others, and leading to a situation where governments feel that legislation must be introduced in order to replace what common manners might previously have provided.
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