Indoor smoking bans in public places made sense, but this is just dumb as fuck.
Second-hand cigarette smoke is a health hazard when frequently ingested and it was probably refreshing to not have everything smell like tobacco. But this harmed the hospitality sector and made smokers far less inclined to go out drinking. A lot of pubs shut after the 2007 smoking ban introduced by the UK and the hospitality sector hasn't really recovered since. A good 'best of both worlds' approach would have been to allow larger establishments to have a ventilated indoor smoking area and make it a soft-ban, but unfortunately big tobacco is the enemy.
And now Keir Starmer (British PM) wants to push through a similar outdoor smoking ban to what the EU are proposing, where it would become illegal to light up outside a hospital or in a pub beer garden.
This moronic plan would basically kill what is left of the hospitality industry, and if Keir Starmer's grand master plan to solve our country's housing crisis is to make more pubs shut so greedy parasitic landlords and property developers can snap them up and turn them for a profit, then he's gonna be remembered as the UK's worst prime minister. And believe me when I say that the Tory bastards who killed thousands with austerity measures, dragged us kicking & screaming out of the European Union, partied in 10 Downing Street while we were forced to lock down from COVID, and who crashed our economy with tax cuts have put up some stiff competition.
Fun fact, you used to be able to smoke on airplanes, and the air quality on flights actually decreased after smoking bans were put in place, because the regulations around air conditioning were also cut.