Huff and puff over a system working fine
CITIES get by on a system of balances between competing or opposed groups. The demands of cyclists are balanced against the needs of drivers, for example. The priorities of Greens voters are balanced against those of private sector workers whose taxes provide for public sector employment.
And attempts by developers to build houses are balanced against the resistance of people who already have them.It all more or less works, in a let's-fix-it-later kind of way.
The balance usually favours one group far more than it does their opposite. But Sydney does provide one example where competing groups are balanced absolutely perfectly. As things stand, this city's smoking laws are overwhelmingly accepted by smokers and non-smokers alike.
This rare harmony is especially evident at many Sydney pubs, where non-smokers happily lay claim to indoor areas while smokers seem content with their banishment outside. This is made easier by Sydney's normally mild weather, and the fact that many Sydney pubs have knocked up decent balconies, complete with heaters, tables and televisions.
So everybody is pleased:
Non-smokers get to visit a pub without suffering the shocking indignity of their clothes becoming slightly infused with cigarette fumes which, if you read certain testimonies online, is the worst thing ever. These folk would have been entertaining company in the trenches during WWI.
Smokers get to drink while smoking, which truly is all that us in the alcohol-and-inhale community ever wish for.
We will put up with a great deal to achieve this.
A few years ago, management at one eastern suburbs hotel allowed access to a shabby lane behind remarkably ill-maintained toilets as a token smoking/drinking location.
They really didn't expect anyone to use it, given the frankly revolting ambience, but some nights there were more people out there in sewerage alley than there were inside.
And bar owners are delighted not to lose the custom of nicotine-enthusiast clientele, which in the case of many pubs is the only thing keeping them solvent. Naturally, this ideal circumstance is doomed.
Greens, of course, are pushing for even more restrictive smoking regulations than are due to be introduced next year by the state government. Craven Liberal and Labor politicians, who would rather be exposed as paedophiles than stand up for the rights of smokers, aren't much better.
Give it a few years and the crowded balconies you currently see around Sydney pubs during winter will be empty.
The social effects of smoking's demonisation are already alarming. A year or so ago a couple of friends dropped by my place for a drink. Being polite, they asked where they could smoke.
"Here," I said. "It's a smoking house." Then I went upstairs to quickly deal with some emails.
When I returned, I found the pair - they're nearly 50, for God's sake - huddled and smoking next to an open door at the rear of the house. After decades of being ordered outside to smoke, they couldn't fully accept that for once they had the option of actually sitting down like men and lighting up.
Both of these fellows, by the way, have previously barged through police lines and other official barricades. They're not wimps. They've just become so unfamiliar with seeing a ceiling and walls while they smoke.
Television and journalism, previously funded by and deeply associated with smoking, are as much to blame as governments.
These once-libertine arenas are now hostage to non-smoking guilt-shriekers, although participants in both fields are incredibly prone to what we might call "binge smoking".
Every journalist who smokes knows to take at least two packets along (one mild) to any showbiz awards night, because once you're picked as a smoker you will be targeted for cigarette pleading for the rest of the night.
The same deal happens at the Walkleys or anywhere else journalists gather to drink and pick up prizes. Collectively we are the worst cigarette bludgers you'll ever meet. The ABC, in particular, seems to employ more than the general industry-wide level of awards-night nicotine freaks.
Yet all of this all takes place safely out of doors.
The indoor/outdoor system works, whether it be at awards nights or at your local hotel.
A rational government would seek to maintain this beautiful sense of order. Sadly, meddlers don't merely want non-smoking areas of their own - they want non-smoking areas where non-smokers never set foot.
It's enough to make you want to take up heroin. Except that in Sydney's heroin injecting room, smoking is banned due to health reasons. It needs a balcony.
Source: The Daily Telegraph, 23 July 2012
