Smoke gets in your eyes… but not for ever
Fashions come and go, and come again. Others come and go and go forever. Take cigarette smoking, which has been raised as an issue in hospitality again. It is an important debate but the broader picture is worth a look.
From the turn of the last century until the mid-1960s, cigarettes were an easily accepted part of life. People smoked without concern if they wanted to, and were encouraged to do so. Until the US surgeon general's famous report of 1964, smoking was considered socially acceptable. In fact, it's hard to imagine film stars from the great days of Hollywood looking cool without a cigarette.
But Humphrey Bogart died of cancer and it turns out that the surgeon general was probably right to link the disease with smoking (although there are those who will always debate the issue).
Gradually, over the past 30 years, smoking has been viewed with increasing hostility in the West by a health-conscious public. It used to be accepted that smokers could indulge their habit wherever they pleased - in the office, the factory, the theatre, the cinema, on buses and trains, everywhere in fact. But these days, a clampdown on tobacco use makes it virtually impossible for smokers to light up in public.
In early 1998, the UK Government's minister for public health, a certain Tessa Jowell, stated that she wanted "smoking to be banned in public".
And that is what is happening. Slowly, gradually, inexorably, measures are being introduced that make it harder and harder for smokers to relax in places where non-smokers might be affected.
For hospitality, smoking remains a difficult issue. Operators of pubs, restaurants and hotels traditionally like to accommodate the wishes of everyone - in this case smokers and non-smokers, which is why compromise measures such as "Courtesy of Choice" have been so well supported.
It's quite right that each shift in the tide of public opinion, and each attempt to introduce yet more bureaucracy and legislation on the hospitality industry, should be fully explored. However, the transition period when smoking is tolerated in public will last only so long before a total ban on smoking in public places becomes inevitable.
This might come as a depressing insult to those who keep fighting for individual rights, and it might take many years before the change is in place and accepted. But, as humiliating as it sounds, future historians are likely to regard smoking as a serious but ultimately silly passion.
Despite the debate, the lobbying, the compromises; despite the huge commercial interests of the tobacco industry worldwide and the fact that nicotine is an addictive drug, cigarettes will eventually become obsolete. Sorry.
As a fashion, smoking will pass and, perhaps in 100 years' time, the debate about whether pub, restaurant and hotel operators should allow cigarettes to be consumed on their premises will be as forgotten as five Woodbines and a milk stout.
Forbes Mutch, Editor,Caterer & Hotelkeeper
