Smoking in pubs should not be banned

As my opponent has forfeited this round, I have no argument to respond to. So, I have decided to quickly pay my attention to the comments. RoyLathman You talked about the use of air purifiers which are very effective at cleaning indoor air and sucking out airborne pollutants as an alternative to the smoking ban. HEPA licensed purifiers (line duct systems) are often of a very high standard and need to be able to remove "at least 99.97% of 0.3 micrometres airborne pollutants." However, this is a rule requiring money to be spent, and it needs to be considered that complaints would rise against the government claiming that the law is in favour of successful businesses (pubs, restaurants) because small pubs are not likely to be able to maintain HEPA licensed purifiers. You said "It turned out not to be expensive or difficult" but I'm afraid I have to disagree there. Good quality air purifiers (HEPA licensed), are quite expensive to maintain this is because electricity consumption needs to be taken into account. Air purifiers need the filters to be replaced after some time which also costs money. Staff will need to be trained to clean the system regularly, and time will have to be spent cleaning the system when they could be doing other work (this could also cause staff to demand raises). Now, local pub owners will be upset with this because a lot of them will lose smoking customers who will prefer to go to pubs that have these HEPA licensed purifiers. Their upset will not be helped by the fact that if they are to get a purifier then they will have to suffer these costs just to maintain their customer levels. So, they will have more costs and no increase in their income which if you do your math means they will have to accept a reduction in profit or risk losing their customers to nearby competition with purifiers, which again leads to a reduction in profit. Now the smoking ban, only asks for courtesy of smokers to step out for a few minutes while they have a smoke at no extra cost to anyone. I hope you can see how necessary it is that the smoking ban applies to everyone, not just pubs that have the money to afford certain technologies. Also, your other suggestion of employees having to wear gas masks to work. First of all, this solution is very inconsiderate towards the needs of the employees who will not be happy to have to wear gas masks to work. Also, the pubs will again need to pay for these at no forecast of profiting from the purchases whereas a simple and cost free solution of having the smokers step out for a few minutes has already been issued. And yes, the smoking ban is also helped by concerns about the environment but that clearly isn't what it's all about. And I have explained some of the health risks repeatedly in my earlier arguments. The toxic substances in cigarette smoke are obviously bad for the environment. Yes, there probably was concern about the unneeded electricity consumption if public places across the country started opting to use air purifiers for several hours on end. Also, some "ionic air purifiers generate ozone, an energetic allotrope of three oxygen atoms, and in the presence of humidity, small amounts of NOx (laughing gas)." Obviously this is bad for the environment but there are also health concerns for people with asthma and allergies, because increased ozone concentration can increase the risk of asthma attacks. My source was: http://en.wikipedia.org... Lexj, I find your comment doesn't really need a response, but I will ask you to do your research because mathematicians and scientists conduct the research that produces these statistics. And if you did your research you'd know that before the results retrieved from research are considered valid facts, there needs to be significant evidence to support the conclusions. And there is overwhelming evidence supporting the fact that second hand smoke is dangerous for anyone inhaling it (fit or unfit). So saying that all the people who have died from smoking had other conditions contributing to their death is just wishful thinking. Tmhustler, your suggestion would simply raise issues where pub owners will feel hard done by because they have lost a lot of customers because they just weren't lucky enough. Using a lottery/auction to decide which pub gets a smoking license would expose the government as irresponsible and short-sighted. Out of the 10 pubs, the 5 that don't get the smoking license will struggle to keep their smoking customers. Now say 3 of the non-smoking pubs close down because most of their customers were smokers. This means that there will be 2 non smoking pubs and 5 smoking pubs, so does that mean some of the pubs with a license will have to lose their license? Does that mean another lottery/auction has to be done? Now the ones that lose their license will also feel unfairly treated and soon and very soon the government will have to deal with protests by pub owners. Also a lottery or auction is an incredibly irresponsible way of handing out licenses. You don't hand out licenses willy nilly or to the highest bidders. You need to make sure the licensee is capable of meeting the requirements of the license and will not simply take advantage of the license. Also, having an auction will favour successful pubs and small local pubs will again be unfairly treated in this situation. How will these lotteries be funded? It is most likely to be government funding which effectively means the public is paying for it. How will the public feel about paying for such an unneeded event. And before you know it, members of the public will be backing pub owners in their protests against the lotteries/auctions. Brian_eggleston, I'm sorry you missed the deadline as I was looking forward to your response. Anyway, thank you for this debate.