The Schalter

Written by: Stephen Gray

The 12th March and national No Smoking Day was upon us. Did you notice? I don’t blame you. I was wondering about the significance of the day earlier when I realised something that surprised me: I was finding it hard to care any more. It wasn’t a deliberate lack of caring, it wasn’t to put a couple of fingers up at the nanny state, or an adolescent snub to Westminster and the NHS, but more a creeping uninterested attitude which remained unfazed by any ad campaign thrown at it. All the toxic chemicals? Meh. That pretty lady whose smile reveals stained teeth? Ill-bothered. Waking up to find you’re stuck on a giant cigarette? Well, OK, those ones made me laugh.

When did that happen? It wasn’t always that way: I though had opinions on the subject, on the nature of the NHS-funded literature and adverts, on my doctor’s surgery texting me to ask whether I smoked. Certain things riled me. So what was the reason for all this recent blasé shrugging? The dousing of these strong reactions without me noticing started, I think, with the ban. The news which left many an ashtray manufacturer wide-eyed and troubled, swathes of the population wondering of what it is that pubs actually smell underneath all the smoke, the general panic over what we were all going to do come 1st July 2007: the Fumigate scandal.

In actuality, it proved to be an anti-climax which would have forced JJ Abrams to lean back in his executive swivel-chair, put his fingertips together and concede defeat. Well, had he not been somewhere almost filming monsters. I was out of the country on the 1st, but the city I came back to was only subtly different. No one really seemed put out. It was summer after all and anything a Briton can do in the sunshine must be done in the sunshine, smoking and drinking included. As the days grew shorter and colder we started to move indoors when we realised, you couldn’t smoke indoors. Of course by then it was too late, we’d had a couple of months and most of the ban’s kinks had been ironed out and it was there to stay. The Facebook groups devoted to denouncing the fascism and the discrimination had slowed. Why start moaning months after it was brought in?

It’s pretty much a given of brainwashing that you don’t know you’ve been brainwashed. In a similar way I wasn’t sure how far I trusted myself to be sui juris when, a few months after it was implemented, I ended up supporting the smoking ban. It might have been that I subconsciously convinced myself the only way I would get through a social life as a smoker with the law as it was would be to admit the ban’s proponents had a point. It might be that somewhere nestled inside me there is still the kernel of my real opinion, a shrivelled ball of bitterness insisting I have a right to light up as my forebears did. But really, I doubt it. All cards on the table, it’s hard to argue convincingly against the ban. Yes, that mystery pub smell turned out to be pretty unpleasant, and conversations were fragmented at the start when one would have to get up and go outside to smoke, but these are things to which you become more or less accustomed. Quickly too. When I realised it was No Smoking Day I considered waiting till July to write about the ban, until its first birthday, when I realised there’s a good chance I’ll forget about it when the summer rolls around. The issue of the ban and the accompanying pontificating has more or less dropped off the radar. You adapt, get used to, put up with, and before you realise it you’ve found a system and it’s barely a problem any more.

I guess I could go on here but I’m gasping for a cigarette, I’ll tell you the rest outside. You don’t smoke? Ah.

You’ll have to excuse me for what might seem like solipsism in taking the smoker’s point of view here. I haven’t seen even the most ardent anti-smoker laughing heartily or performing cartwheels while I stand the other side of the window puffing and peering in from the cold like a member of the chorus from Oliver. To all intents and purposes the issue seems to have dispersed for both sides, like so much painfully metaphorical smoke. But it’s the views of those whose job it is to discourage smoking which brings me to my next point.

I know the ban’s primary objective was to protect workers’ lungs and ensure cleaner air for non-smokers in enclosed spaces where the lingering second-hand smoke was formerly present. But it’s an almost necessary, and welcome, by-product of that that the increased inconvenience might lead people to consider giving up the habit. What has been, at first glance, unusual is the relative quiet on the anti-smoking front since the ban. From July 2007 the pressure seems to have been eased on media campaigns to shock smokers into giving up. To me at least this conjured up an image of someone with a dangerous animal in their garden. They open the back door, step out and try to frighten it away then immediately run back to safety to take stock of the situation. The televised campaigns have gone from the unsettling fish hooks to the bloke rifling through his bin for one of those whistling party toys; from a daughter’s reaction to her father dying of lung cancer to the people who need help to literally get off their upended fantastically over-sized cigarettes. No Smoking Day appears to be sailing by with barely any recognition and only token publicising.

Maybe this is why I haven’t been bothered by the anti-smoking lobbyists recently. A lot of ground was gained last summer and now we smokers are looking at them quizzically as they peer over the sink through the kitchen windows at us, gauging our next move. I admit it, I have been enjoying this little period of quiet in which, having adjusted to the regime change, I can cope with the ban and the ads have not yet become more graphic and prevalent. But I’ve been on the verge of thinking about seriously considering quitting for a while now, though I made it a stubborn point of principle that it would be through my own volition that I finally stopped buying half-kilos of tobacco whenever I was near a duty-free, rather than give in to stop the onslaught of unsettling images and leaflets reminding me how much carbon monoxide, shellac and ammonia I’m inhaling. Interestingly enough, this period of near-silence from the lobby has seen me almost take the plunge on a couple of occasions. After years of trying to work out whether it was the feelings of guilt on seeing the posters or my own will that led me to consider stubbing out my final cigarette, it seems I perhaps shouldn’t have worried about brainwashing after all. And paradoxically, I have the hand-forcing legislation to thank for giving me the space to realise that.

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