Weeding out the smokers - thoughts on smoke-free pubs

I break new ground this week by agreeing with Tim Martin, the boss of Wetherspoon. Speaking on Radio 4 recently, Tim said he was not against a ban on smoking in pubs, a position that will once again put him at odds with the rest of the pub-owning fraternity.

Critics will point out that it's comparatively easy for Wetherspoon to oppose smoking: most of its outlets are not pubs as we know them, but have been fashioned from redundant banks, cinemas and - in the case of my local - Army Recruiting Offices.

Large, open-plan and with high ceilings, they can absorb cigarette smoke better than older, smaller pubs, especially those built centuries ago, when people were smaller and ceilings correspondingly lower.

Nevertheless, Tim Martin made some pertinent points. He said that when smoking in public places was banned in California, sales in bars declined for a while but are now recovering strongly.

It's too early to know whether the same will happen in Ireland. I have been impressed by the ingenuity of Dublin bar owners, who have developed covered outside drinking areas complete with heaters, where smokers can enjoy the noxious weed. We can treat with derision the media claims last week that the 6% fall in sales of Guinness in Ireland has been caused by the smoking ban. Why do people write such bubble-brained nonsense? The consumption of Guinness in its homeland has been quietly falling for years and didn't suddenly happen when the smoking ban was introduced.

Perhaps the most sensible point made by Tim Martin - one that every publican and pub owner in the land should consider seriously - is that smoking in Britain is in decline. Those who say a smoking ban will kill the pub trade are being blinkered and short sighted. The next generation of pub-goers will smoke less than the present one. The pub trade must lift its collective head from the ash tray and take the long view.

Today's smokers may stop going to pubs if they can't light up. But, without doubt, a far larger number of young people, when they reach legal drinking age, will avoid pubs like the plague if they find smoking is allowed.

It's the needs of the second group that pub owners have meet. Tim Martin made the point that sales of alcohol in supermarkets are growing by 10% a year while pub sales are falling by 2%.

It would be na�ve to claim that stay-at-home drinkers avoid pubs only as a result of their aversion to smoking. The drift from draught beer to packaged is complex, connected to changing life styles, social aspirations, even snobbery - "Nice people don't go to pubs" - and the fact that in a few cases the hooligan element make pub-going a less than pleasant experience.

I have two sons aged 16 and 13. When I was between those two ages, I was a member of the furtive smokers' club at school, puffing away behind the bike sheds during the dinner break. My sons, on the other hand, think smoking is foul and are genuinely astonished when pupils at their school are caught with cigarettes. I hope that, even when they've flown the nest, they won't take up the weed.

But - and I hope this underlines my point - they do like going to pubs. They enjoy the informal atmosphere that is so different to starchy restaurants, they often like the food and the elder one is being carefully introduced to the pleasures of beer via lemonade shandies. The one thing they don't like about pubs is leaving them with clothes and hair reeking of cigarette smoke.

They are the future and everybody involved in owning and running pubs must take them seriously. I am not insensitive to publicans whose premises are difficult to change as a result of size, history or, in some cases, government Grade I or II listings.

But in general, the pub trade must either prepare for the new generation of drinkers or face decline and closure.

I never thought these words would come from my keyboard, but well said Tim Martin.