A RECENT report by former health minister Lord Darzi suggested that smoking should be banned in public spaces and parks. Cities such as New York, Toronto and Hong Kong have already banned smoking in key public locations. Earlier this month, Bristol became the first British city to take up the challenge, when two city squares, Millennium Square and Anchor Square on the harbourside, became smoke-free, albeit with a voluntary request.

It is more than seven years since smoking was banned in pubs, restaurants and other public buildings. New legislation banning it in cars has been passed. A spokesman for Forest, the smokers’ lobby group, predictably called Lord Darzi’s proposals “illiberal and unwarranted. Smoking in the open air harms no one apart, perhaps, from the consumer.”

I disagree with that. Ever since July 2007, when the indoor ban came in, every bar or restaurant has had groups of smokers on the pavement outside, surrounded by a noxious fug of carcinogenic air-pollution. In many cases, the ash-receptacles that were then provided have now been broken, vandalised or removed, so that pavements are littered with dog-ends, often thrown down still burning.

I object to having to breathe second hand cigarette smoke every time I walk up the street. Forcing all the smokers out of buildings into the open air has only relocated the problem. I come home from every shopping trip with the stench of cigarette smoke in my nose. And second hand cigarette smoke is said to be even more harmful to health than the smoker’s own lungful.

Smoking is a revolting habit which should have been left behind in the twentieth century. I am wholly in favour of banning it in all public areas, whether indoors or outdoors. Brighton and Hove should follow Bristol’s lead.

Graham Chainey

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