As if banning smoking in almost every public place wasn’t enough for the paternalists, Lord Faulkner has now put down an amendment to ban that last bastion of smokers’ freedom: the cigar lounge. This is a gross violation of private property and yet another blow to Britain’s hospitality industry. The main argument favouring the 2007 indoor smoking ban – that it is wrong to expose staff to second-hand smoke – simply doesn’t stick here, if it ever did. Liberals of all parties ought to resist the temptation to be seen to be tough on the bogeyman of ‘Big Tobacco’ and vote the amendment down.
Since 2007, the only public place where smoking is still allowed indoors is in the cigar lounges of tobacco sellers. A few places such as the Connaught Cigar Merchants, East India Club and Wellesley Hotel provide these dens of pleasure because there remain about 600,000 people who regularly smoke cigars. As establishments built on private property, it should be up to them to decide whether or not they want to allow smoking in their own tobacco shops. To prohibit smoking in cigar lounges is to wrongly seize an element of their private property; no different in essence from your neighbour coming into your living room and stopping you from smoking there.
So, what is Lord Faulkner’s justification for his amendment? According to him, ‘every worker has the right to a healthy environment’. Cigar lounges are an affront to this right because workers have to breathe in smoke while working there. Problems abound in Faulkner’s argument. First, even assuming the very strict right to work in a healthy environment exists, cigar lounges do not violate it, because, hospitality workers can simply choose to work in the 99% of places entirely without tobacco smoke. This is in stark contrast to the situation before 2007, when most pubs allowed smoking. Second, if every worker has ‘the right to a healthy environment’, ie. an enforceable claim to it, this could be given up by the worker anyway, since it is their right; they may like the atmosphere of the cigar lounge, enjoy the type of clientele or get paid more for working in it.
The reality is that Faulkner has no interest in the rights of the individual; he’s not going to allow people to sell them after all. Instead, Faulkner’s measure is simply another paternalist intervention to end what he calls ‘the scourge of tobacco and nicotine addiction’. Notwithstanding, the moral idea itself that we have an unassailable right to a healthy environment from every employer existing is patently absurd anyway. In the UK, binmen are eight times more likely to die in work-related accidents than the average worker. Are the rights of binmen being violated? No, because, we don’t actually have an all-encompassing right to a healthy environment from every employer in the country.
I imagine Faulkner might reply that the all-encompassing right to a healthy environment can be overridden where there are social benefits big enough to warrant it, and while recycling may be one of them, smoking in cigar lounges is not. This counter is implausible at best. The health risk of second-hand smoke is next to non-existent to begin with, thus, the mentioned all-encompassing right may never be violated. A World Health Organisation seven-year study into second-hand smoke found the risk of lung cancer from consistent exposure only rose from 1 case in 10,000 to 1.16 cases in 10,000.Faulkner would also have to be against people barbecuing sausages at pubs, because, since wood smoke is 12 times more cancerous than tobacco smoke, the chef’s right would definitely not be overridden.
In addition to the clear case for respecting the private property of cigar lounge owners given the uncompelling arguments of Faulkner, there exists the straightforward fact that banning cigar lounges will create job losses and business bankruptcies. At a time when the minimum wage is increasing, national insurance is going up and business rates are rocketing too, this is the last thing that hospitality owners who have carved out a niche in the market need.
Lord Faulkner’s proposed amendment to the Tobacco and Vapes Bill not only violates the private property rights of cigar lounge owners, but threatens their businesses and the jobs of those they employ. Liberals should stand firmly against this amendment dressed up in the grossly implausible costume of protecting employees against second-hand smoke and expose the naked truth of it. It’s simply another attempt to push people about for their own alleged good.
Click here to subscribe to our daily briefing – the best pieces from CapX and across the web.
CapX depends on the generosity of its readers. If you value what we do, please consider making a donation.
