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Smoking ban costs taxpayers £65k

10:04am Tuesday 29th July 2008

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INTRODUCING the smoking ban in York cost the taxpayer almost £65,000, new figures have shown.

But high levels of public compliance have meant only £560 of fines have been issued since the ban came in.

A financial breakdown obtained by The Press shows the vast majority of the expense went on paying staff, with £47,000 going on wages.

National insurance and superannuation accounted for a further £11,500, while more than £3,000 went on advertising the ban, which came into effect on July 1 last year.

Although City of York Council spent the money on introducing and enforcing the ban, the Government issued grants to cover the cost, meaning the expense was from the national rather than local public purse.

Anti-smoking campaign group Ash today said the money had been well spent, hailing the large number of people who had quit smoking since last summer.

Policy manager Martin Dockrell welcomed the fact York had only raised £560 in fines, saying it reflected good adherence to the law.

He said the cost of the ban, nationwide, was the same as a packet of ten cigarettes for each smoker in England. “It has been used well and it has produced some staggering results,” he said.

“We can already see a fall in the number of emergency heart attacks across England, by up to 40 per cent in some areas.”

But Neil Rafferty, spokesman for the Freedom Organisation For The Right To Enjoy Smoking Tobacco (Forest) said: “In York, as across the country, it has been a huge waste of money.

“If there had been smoking and non-smoking pubs, as proposed by Labour in its 2005 manifesto, everyone would have had a choice; there would have been no controversy and you would not have needed an army of enforcement officers.”

Almost all of York’s fines have been for taxi drivers caught smoking in their vehicles. As reported in The Press earlier this year, a dozen such fines were issued within the first year of the ban. A shop owner fined £150 for failing to display a no-smoking sign was the only other offender.

Mr Rafferty saidd: “With taxis, these are by and large taxi drivers’ own private property and if they are smoking between fares, they are not bothering anybody else, so it’s a victimless crime.

“It seems more and more councils are going to use smoking legislation to fleece people.”

The amount spent by the council was revealed after The Press used the Audit Commission Act to inspect the council’s accounts.

All public bodies must open their accounts for four weeks a year. The council is currently halfway through that period.

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Your Say YourYork Press

Noneoftheaboveorbelow, Heworth Without It says...
10:50am Tue 29 Jul 08

Council tax money well spent. Hardly anybody smokes in the Minster these days thanks to the No Smoking signs.

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Nitro, London says...
11:08am Tue 29 Jul 08


I suggest that Policy manager Martin Dockrell checks out the cost of the nationwide smoking ban.

The latest estimated cost is that every working taxpayer (smokers and non smokers) pay in excess of £100 additional tax per person per year to keep the smoking ban going.

Most people would rather spend the money on paying their fuel bills.

As per the 40% drop in heart attacks this is another statistic that does not stand up to scientific fact.

With regard to the smoking ban it is not about protecting workers from second hand smoke, it is all about reducing smoker prevelance as promised to the EU.

It does not matter to the government how much extra tax you pay or how many of our pubs and clubs are shut or if you are discriminated against, all that matters is meeting EU targets.



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tug wilson, nottingham says...
11:22am Tue 29 Jul 08

The smoking ban is costing the country millions and how many people has it saved from secondhand smoke death?, NONE,not one person has ever died of passive smoking in the world,FACT,if anyone thinks that taking away millions of peoples freedom of choice was a good thing,then i feel very sorry for those intolerant fools,the wheels have come off the smoking ban bandwagon all over the country time for it to go,Tug.

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ILK, York says...
11:31am Tue 29 Jul 08

In response to the post by Tug Wilson - where on earth did you obtain your 'FACT' from that nobody has ever died from passive smoking? Of course they have, Roy Castle being one of them. Hence the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation.

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ILK, York says...
11:33am Tue 29 Jul 08

In response to the post by Tug Wilson - where on earth did you obtain your 'FACT' from that nobody has ever died from passive smoking? Of course they have, Roy Castle being one of them. Hence the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. According to the website, www.passivesmokingil
ls.org.uk, around 3400 die each year from lung cancer caused by passive smoking.

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ILK, York says...
11:33am Tue 29 Jul 08

In response to the post by Tug Wilson - where on earth did you obtain your 'FACT' from that nobody has ever died from passive smoking? Of course they have, Roy Castle being one of them. Hence the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. According to the website, www.passivesmokingil
ls.org.uk, around 3400 die each year from lung cancer caused by passive smoking. FACT.

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marley, manchester says...
12:56pm Tue 29 Jul 08

In response to your comment ILK,York I can find no evidence on the Roy Castle L.C.F website that

the claim is true. In fact September 2000 saw Mrs Castle withdraw support, resign and request her

husbands name removed. That does not sound like a fact to me - perhaps a copy of his death

certificate is available.

Quote from the BBCwebsite.
"A statement on behalf of the charity said: "Today is a sad day in the history of the Roy Castle

Lung Cancer Foundation.

"It is with deep regret that we have been advised by Fiona Castle, widow of Roy, that she is

withdrawing her support from the charity and has requested that her husband's name be removed."

Nor do I see anything but opinion or supposition, no factual science,just a lot of scaremongering.

In any event you miss the point, smokers know the risk and have just as much right to smoke in

warm comfortable surroundings as those who dont, for example smoking pubs/clubs and I am sure not

one of them will object if there are non smokers present or not, everyone will be invited. Smokers

are now at war not with non smokers but with Bigots. Are you one of those bigots?

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petethefeet, York says...
1:37pm Tue 29 Jul 08

I find it puzzling that a smoker who thinks he has a right to poison others should call somebody a 'bigot' because they object? There were always considerate smaokers and INconsiderate smokers. Unfortunately, I have to say that the INconsiderate ones were the majority. It rarely occured to them to move away from other people whilst they indulged believing that they should move away from them instead.
So, nowadays, the boot is on the other foot. I don't agree with taxing smokers to the hilt and I don't believe in bans in outdoor places like hospital grounds. But, after a life-time of been poisoned, I'm grateful for not coming home from a night-out smelling like I've slept with an old badger.

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redr, York says...
1:54pm Tue 29 Jul 08

This is another problem created by dogmatic politicians. People should have a right to choose clean air if they wish or to smoke if they wish in designated areas. Most of the evidence that I have seen relating to passive smoking is to say the least questionable. As for the cost to the NHS the latest figures that I can find showed that smoking related disease costs the NHS approx £5 billion per annum but smokers contribute an additional £8 billion in taxes. So in fact smokers are subsidising by NHS by £3 billion a year.

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Kin_Free, Durham says...
2:46pm Tue 29 Jul 08

Ilk, Passive smoking is as near as damnit harmless, it is NOT poisonous! Tug is correct. Roy did NOT die of passive smoking, he died of lung cancer, just as many non-smokers do every day. 'Passive smoking' is a term that was first coined during Hitler's anti-smoking campaign. It was adopted by the anti-smoking lobby here to justify the smoking ban but it is not based on scientific facts.
Please take time to read the following. It is probably the most up to date assessment of passive smoking science, it explains the research methodology and the science used by anti-tobacco to make their misrepresented claims.(with references to scientific study)
To be blunt, They lied, and continue to do so despite the overwhelming evidence proving their 'science'! to be wrong.

http://www.velvetglo
veironfist.com/index
.php?page_id=34

petethefeet; do you consider it unreasonable to have smoker and non-smoker pubs where you have the choice to enter either,.... and so do smokers? Smoking pubs would = smoke environment, non smoking pubs = no smoke. Simple!

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tug wilson, nottingham says...
3:04pm Tue 29 Jul 08

ILK YORK, I believe non smokers have a right to smoke free air,i also believe smokers have a right to smoke,smoking and non smoking venues would make everyone happy,the reasons for the smoking ban are a fraud,a con trick and now everyone knows that,it is time for this so called government to get rid of the nazi smoking ban,they will not have it in the rest of the EU why should we,give everyone the freedom of choice,who could complain about that?,Tug.

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Bemused, York says...
3:08pm Tue 29 Jul 08

“If there had been smoking and non-smoking pubs, as proposed by Labour in its 2005 manifesto, everyone would have had a choice; there would have been no controversy and you would not have needed an army of enforcement officers.”

Nor would traditional British pubs and clubs, including bingo halls, be going to the wall. Another breach of trust and lies by New Labour in keeping with reneging on the promise to have a referendum on the EU Constitution now called the Lisbon Treaty.

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Vlad The Impaler, Transylvania says...
3:48pm Tue 29 Jul 08

I find that there is now no atmosphere IN pubs since the ban whereas the beer gardens & smoking areas are filled with people enjoying themselves. Anti smokers got what they wanted so why do they still look so miserable when they go out?

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marley, manchester says...
3:53pm Tue 29 Jul 08

Petethefeet, at what point did I say I was a smoker or not. You just proved yourself in the bigot camp by assuming I was and you have an obvious prejudice of old badgers. Grow up this is the real world we live in, risk everywhere and that is how it should be. Its called life.

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Bemused, York says...
4:33pm Tue 29 Jul 08

If it is 'declare an interest' time I am a non smoker, but I prefer the company of smokers to the bigots who are killing off the traditional British pub.

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petethefeet, York says...
4:34pm Tue 29 Jul 08

If it had been up to me then I would have concentrated on air-quality. That in itself would have generated a whole industry around air-filtration. But it wasn't up to me. I suspect that the main body behind this is the BMA and their members see the damage done by smoking. So, whilst they claim this is all about passive smoking I suspect that the real reason is to try and reduce smoking in general, for health reasons. Again, I wouldn't do that because I don't believe in the nanny state but as I said before, I'm grateful that I don't end up smelling like an ash-tray

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marley, manchester says...
5:18pm Tue 29 Jul 08

All of this discussion does not alter the fact that Brown and his cronies will have cost this country billions of pounds of wasted money (our money) at the end of this social engineering experiment and set non smokers against smokers at the same time. I believe this government should be charged with breach of the peace and anti social behaviour at the very least. Also since these charitable bodies seem to thrive on misleading information there must be a charge of obtaining money by deception. ASH for example spout that smoking is less acceptable than than the 911 attacks. If this is what passes for civilisation nowadays, we should all be very worried.

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Pedro, York says...
9:31pm Tue 29 Jul 08

Roy Castle himself thought that a lifetime playing trumpet at smoky nightclubs and working men's clubs played a part in his disease. He said something to the effect of "you have to take great gulps of air - and that air always contained tobacco smoke."

However that is not proof that this was the cause - only a likely cause.

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marley, manchester says...
12:34am Wed 30 Jul 08

Pedro,
Yes and so have a zillion other musicians and he was the only one to blame smoking. I apologise if this comment causes offence but I think he was looking for something to blame, especially since it has been reported that he smoked the odd cigar.

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TooRad, York says...
8:07am Wed 30 Jul 08

Some funny comments above. The reason people are so polarised and vehement on this issue is that we are talking about a highly addictive drug. The pro-camp like to kid themselves that its a freedom of choice issue when actually they're defending their addiction, the anti-camp shoot themselves in the foot by using lame propaganda, bending the truth and generally being smug and self righteous.

Truth is it's much nicer down the pub these days and if taxes are being spent on trying to improve the health of the nation then I applaud it. £65k is a drop in the ocean compared to the daily cost of our stupid occupation of middle-eastern countries, or the cost of hounding users of other, less harmful but illegal plant-based smokable drugs.

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KarenWhite1978, Heslington says...
2:53pm Wed 30 Jul 08

Pedro wrote:
Roy Castle himself thought that a lifetime playing trumpet at smoky nightclubs and working men's clubs played a part in his disease. He said something to the effect of "you have to take great gulps of air - and that air always contained tobacco smoke." However that is not proof that this was the cause - only a likely cause.
Roy Castle died thinking that his cancer was caused by smoking, understandably, given his career in the clubs. That was in fact incorrect, the rare lung cancer he had is not smoking related, but he couldn't have known that, and I believe it was only found after his death.

I'm not sure what this proves in the smoking debate - but it proves that assumptions can be invalid, and that uninformed debate is meaningless.


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