Category — Smoking Ban

Nick Hogan, 43, from Chorley, was sentenced to six months in prison for failing to pay fines for smoking ban breaches at his two Bolton pubs.

Hogan was found guilty of breaching the smoking ban in January 2008 at the Swan and the Barristers pubs he ran.

He fought the law and the law won.

Read full story on the BBC here

Sorry, got no time to write about this news. This is a great pledge by the UK government – lets hope they stick to it.

A plan to halve the number of smokers in England over the next 10 years has been unveiled by ministers.

The number of people smoking has fallen by a quarter in the past decade to 21%, and the proposed target is 10% by 2020.

Measures being considered include removing branding from packets and banning cigarette vending machines, as will happen in Scotland next year.

Smokers’ lobby group Forest criticised the proposals for eroding people’s ability to make lifestyle choices.

Health charity Ash said that while it supported the plans in principle, there was a need for more detail and stronger pledges.

Read full story

Graph showing proportion of people smoking in Great Britain

The government said each year smoking caused 80,000 deaths and cost the NHS £2.7bn.

Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson said the strategy would “discourage children from taking up smoking and prevent a great number of unnecessary and early deaths”.

The smoking ban in enclosed public places was introduced in Scotland in 2006, and in England, Wales and Northern Ireland separately in 2007.

In England and Wales open display of tobacco is to be banned. However this doesn’t extend to a ban on cigarette vending machines.. yet. So i’m guessing this will mean that they go under the desk or the displays will have to be covered up. I think it’s a good move but i can’t help but think this will make them seem more exclusive (to the young). Dare i say it’ll seem like they’re illegal. Will will annoy the long term smokers. It could also make these smokers more defiant to giving up… or could just be the opposite.

This measure has proved popular in Iceland where there’s been a 10% drop in smoking from young people.

Let’s hope that a ban on vending machines goes ahead as purchases can’t be policed from them as easily as in shops.

What do you think about the display ban? Will this help deter smokers?

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Read the full article here: BBC: Ban on tobacco displays announced

A ban on smoking tobacco in public comes into force in India on Thursday.
This affects over 120 million people! Making it the world’s biggest smoking ban.

It has taken 4 years to come in to effect since legislation was approved in 2004. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops with such as large amount smokers. Also how do begin enforce it on that many people!

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The UK smoking ban and slow consumer spending knocks pub group JD Wetherspoon’s full year pretax profits down 11%.

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