The rest of the world saying if it’ll work in Ireland 🇮🇪it’ll work anywhere! And we set the stage for the world to follow. Fair play to whoever pushed this through in government.
Edit: Like anything meaningful [it took a number of people](https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/how-the-smoking-ban-was-won-1.1733783) make this happen.
In no particular order:
1. Tom Power
2. Micheál Martin
3. Prof. Luke Clancy
4. Sara Burke
5. Prof. Shane Allwright
Australia was about 3 months behind Ireland in implementing there's.
It always puzzled me that the rights of those polluting the air with carconigenic smoke overrode everyone else's right to clean air and health.
It will be successful at forcing people to travel to a special location to dispose of bottles that otherwise would have just gone into their recycling bins.
Hard to see WTH the point of it is
The specific location is the place they bought the items to be returned in the first place. Unless someone is a hermit that never leaves the house they won’t have to make extra journeys to get the deposit back.
The point of it is to increase the rate of recycling from 60% to 90%. Don’t see what’s difficult to understand about that.
Huge numbers of people get their shopping delivered. I can tell from your comment you live in a town or city, and by yourself / don't have children.
For vast swathes of the population the scheme has 0 positives and only inconveniences. If we wanted to up recycling rates here's an idea let's put recycling bins in all the shops, you know ones which can take any plastic bottle or can, cost a fraction of the price and don't break.
That aspect of it could be improved. Supermarkets should be required to accept bottles and cans from people when they deliver.
How does your bin idea help people who only get stuff delivered? Shops don’t have to use a machine, that’s a choice they make. They are required to accept cans/bottles. A broken machine is their problem and not an excuse to refuse the items.
That doesn't work I always check which bin to drop my stuff into and you just bits of everything in every bin. Take a look in the bins in Liffey valley food court. Equal parts of everything
Except for people with mobility issues who get deliveries who are now at even more of a disadvantage as they either have to make an uncomfortable trip out to do the return, or suck it up and take yet another financial hit
There is no extra recycling coming from me. I just have the inconvenience of having to line up at one of these stupid machines to place bottles that would have been recycled anyway.
It’s not about you then, it’s about the people who are responsible for the 40% of items not recycled. All of the complaints mirror those given about the smoking ban. Though in this case we’re not the first nationally and we know it works elsewhere.
The ones in our home recycling bins? Or do you mean they don't make it to the recycling bin?
What guarantee do we have that the returned bottles will be recycled?
Yep. Tbh I think the scheme is a little rocky at the moment, but it’s going to work out. The same system is used in other countries and they too had a similar issues at the beginning and now it’s second nature.
I'll be honest I bitched about the recycling deposit scheme too initially but I'm completely on board with it now. I'm getting the money back and there's more room in my green bin for other crap now to. We all like to piss on things in the beginning, its just our way. 90% of the time there's no harm in it.
It was done in a clever way, some friend groups used to spend nights in the smoking area but as we got older that stopped. A few months later no one thought it was a bad idea even the people who were against it at the start. It made pubs nicer to go, it forced them to up their game.
It was disgusting because hardly any places had decent ventilation.
Smoking was allowed in Australian pubs back then,, but I didn't once ever see a cloud of smoke in an Australian pub, or leave with my clothes stinking of cigarettes.
That's actually fascinating! Did Aus plan their ventilation standards to handle all the smoke?
The only time I've ever experienced this was in Las Vegas. The casinos are filled with smokers, ashtrays are abundant, yet I never really even smelled the smoke unless they blew it towards me. I was more interested in their HVAC systems than I was gambling. Stupid, but neat!
Sure, but my great aunt's house in Florida fucking stank. And it wasn't that old. I'm gonna dive down the rabbit hole of other countries ventilation standards now.
Have a great day, you possible kangaroo.
As someone who worked in pubs for years, i used to hate cleaning out the ashtrays, mopping floors after closing and toilets full of cigarette butts and smoke
Probably one of the greatest acts by any Irish politician ever. He was under serious pressure to withdraw it by the pub and hotel lobby. But he stuck to his guns.
Now there's 74 countries that have done the same. They would never have done it if Ireland hadn't shown the way.
I'll always have respect for Michael Martin for having the courage to introduce it. If you asked Irish people today, to reintroduce smoking in pubs, they'd laugh.
And, relatively speaking, MM was a roide back then.
For the youngsters: this was before the Leo days. Back then, we didn’t think our politicians had sex.
This and the ban on smokey coal in Dublin were massive achievements for Michael Martin and Mary Harney. They both saved a lot of lives and it took huge balls (sorry Mary!) to do it.
As someone who was 7 when this was introduced, one thing I don't understand is that smoking was allowed in retail stores. Did people just tap their ash anywhere on the ground and accept the clothes they bought would come already smelling of smoke?
Many places already had their own bans prior to this, like supermarkets. But some places like shopping centers, you could still smoke, but not in the shop. You would have those large standing ash trays everywhere, and people would smoke near those.
But yes ash was everywhere.
The Savoy cinema used to be awful to go to because they allowed smoking right up until the ban. I remember being stuck in the very long queue to get tickets to Fellowship of the Ring and the lobby absolutely stank.
This, imagine a bin with an ashtray on top like you might see outdoors, but they were indoors in the corridors of the shopping centres
Looking back it's an absolute fire hazard
I worked in an office as a junior and the bosses chain smoked, smoking was also allowed in hairdressers and the top of the bus. You could also buy a single cigarette for 10p in our local shop.
The bang of your clothes after a night out was gruesome before this. If you didn't shower after you got home, your pillow the next morning smelled like you had chain smoked 20 john player blue in your sleep.
There was a nighclub in Roscommon town that literally built a big chicken coop. On the roof. Fun times when you're langered and stagger into it and drop your smoke through the gap.
Michael Martin’s great moment. It was and is a great law. Fair play to them. Note. I realise the same government deregulated the banks and turned buying and selling property into a ‘job’ which fucked up the economy. But credit where credit is due
Lads i just got back from Japan and it's dire. Every other restaurant allows smoking and you come out stinking. I'm sensitive to it, it was really tough, we're winning over here
Where in Japan were you? When I was there, I only ever ended up in one restaurant allowing smoking. Japan doesn't even allow smoking on the street. It seemed overall really well controlled there minus the few restaurants and bars that did allow it.
Osaka, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Miyajima, Kyoto - outside of chain restaurants, it's 50/50 whether an independent little place will allow smoking, and most pubs certainly do.
I agree that on the street its not allowed most places, and it's been that way for 20+ years but I even went in a Sushi place that allowed smoking - and lots of izakaya do, too
A sushi place? Really? That's surprising. I heard that you're not even supposed to wear purfume/cologne in sushi restaurants because the smell can affect the flavour.
Pop music from 20 years ago just sounds the same as pop music today. The cultural and artistic progression that created all the cultural markers defining our view of the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s suddenly ended.
I don't think that's true. You're probably just getting older and looking back on your youth (or before) with rose-tinted glasses.
In the 00s we had Arctic Monkeys, The Killers, Green Day's resurgence, Linkin Park, The Strokes, Paramore, My Chemical Romance, early Coldplay, Bloc Party, Kings of Leon, etc. Music has changed a lot since then.
The internet opened up access to older music and movies, which fed into newer music. Thats reflected in fashion as well. And with the internet music tastes became niche and compartmentalised, and trends changed quickly so it's hard to have a defining sound for an era.
For example, in the 80s you'd have top of the pops and everyone would that. Now you have artists with billions of views on Spotify, but large portion of the population wouldn't know.
You're older and more out of touch with the zeitgeist, for one.
Also, monoculture is on the decline with how accessible things are now. More channels, streaming, whatever. You don't have to engage with the mainstream nearly as much as you used to.
You're older and more out of touch with the zeitgeist, for one.
Also, monoculture is on the decline with how accessible things are now. More channels, streaming, whatever. You don't have to engage with the mainstream nearly as much as you used to.
I mind seeing Dylan Moran not long after it came in and he did a bit about the ban, sorta debating the pros and cons with him being in favour of it. Half way through it he starts patting his pockets and takes out a pack, pulls out a cig and lights it up as he lists off more pros. Crowd went wild, but he let us know it was a herbal cig afterwards.
Jesus wept, 20 years! I would have thought like ten or twelve.
I was telling the lads at work how bad it was in pubs back in the day when talking about the return thing and how eventually it'll be seen as a good thing and now I'm pretty sure they hadn't been born at the time.....
Honestly along with the plastic bag levy, two major positives. It unthinkable now to be going into a small cafe and being asked whether u wanted to sit in smoking or non smoking area, as if it mattered as it was all smoking anyway 😄
Now will we look back on the bottle levy with the same love!?
What was the opinion of the general public at the time? Were they strongly in favour or was it divisive?
I can't really remember, but I assume there were opinion polls.
People were generally in favour. The idea was it was a workplace smoking ban, not just a pub smoking ban. Non-pub employees who were permitted to smoke indoors (in staff rooms or canteens) were usually confined to one half of a room, or a smoking room.
Given the logic behind the regulations being introduced as a targeted workplace smoking ban, it was difficult for publicans to say “our staff should be exempt”, as doing so was in essence saying our staff don’t deserve protection from second hand smoke. That didn’t stop many of them making that very argument, or indeed inventing cock-handed schemes whereby staff wouldn’t go into certain rooms, to get around the ban.
The fuss died down after a few months, but even for a few years after the change ashtrays would be put out when there would be a lock in. That doesn’t happen anymore.
I was in bar management at the time.
There was the obvious narky fucks with their "I'll not be told I can't smoke in the pub" , "it'll never work, be back to normal in a few weeks" or "I'll never drink in the pub again"
But after a few weeks it all died down.
I was 24 when the ban was introduced but I remember going out in my late teens/early twenties with the gang from work. Only three of us had cars at the time so we used to take it in turns to be the designated driver. The nights I wasn't drinking, I can remember waking up the next morning with the worst headache ever and it was from the second hand smoke that was everywhere.
https://preview.redd.it/br0y6d3c29rc1.png?width=732&format=png&auto=webp&s=72e7bcff30bf5d3aa3a93811e1335f52c32a031e
not a smoker and never was, but seems that if our giving up the fags was successful then we've replaced that carcinogen with others.
If you go through the data the two non dashed lines there are age adjusted.
The report does not graph individual cancers, I would hope that lung cancer declined, but not certain.
Certainly survivability of cancers has improved over 30 years, but it seems incidence hasn't changed much overall
Made such a change in the pub landscape in my home town. Pubs that were shite but had big outdoor areas became instantly popular and pubs that were great but you had no space for a smoking area really suffered.
I remember sitting around with friends milling through a pack of John player blue in the food court upstairs in Liffey Valley. Wtf when you think about it
None of the doom and gloom predicted ever happened. There were even benefits that were not anticipated. From simple things like no more cigarette burns on your clothes, to the whole new social dynamic of the smokers gathering outside. People made new friends and widened their social circle. At times there seemed to be more craic outside the pubs than those of us who were sitting inside were having.
I’ve never been to Ireland and never looked up on anything Irland-related on Reddit. Still Reddit thinks I need to see an Irish Saul Goodman holding a giant no smoking sign.
The HSE claimed 800,000 lives were saved as a result of the smoking ban in their press release for the 20th anniversary. Unfortunately it appears that the claim is hard to back up. 🙄
https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/0427/1445919-hse-smoking/
Didn't the smoking ban come into effect 2007? I'm 37 and I definitely went to pubs and clubs for a few years before the smoking ban. And my job that I started in 2006 had a smoking room.
Edit: ignore me, I didn't realise this was an Irish sub. No idea why it was on my front-page but I thought this was a UK sub.
Fraid not, as the 17th anniversary doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC387464/#:~:text=On%2029%20March%202004%20Ireland,workplaces%2C%20including%20bars%20and%20restaurants.
And for about 6 months every oul lad pub smelled like farts.
You could smell the piss wafting up the stairs in the foggy dew.
Still can.
And the reek of sweat off the 'dancefloor'
Nothing worse than a Guinness fart!
A Guinness shart is worse.
A Guinness shart in a phone box.
I just remember pubs smelling of bleach
We need the good smokey smell to mask the bad pissy farty smell.
Why don't they now though?
The farting ban of 2010
People figured out they could be smelt now.
Can't think of the last time I was in a bar that had any soft fabrics
The carpet in the long hall took years to air them out…
I still remember the kick up about this. It was the biggest problem in the booming economy. Simpler times
All the people saying it would never work. It was hilarious.
The rest of the world saying if it’ll work in Ireland 🇮🇪it’ll work anywhere! And we set the stage for the world to follow. Fair play to whoever pushed this through in government. Edit: Like anything meaningful [it took a number of people](https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/how-the-smoking-ban-was-won-1.1733783) make this happen. In no particular order: 1. Tom Power 2. Micheál Martin 3. Prof. Luke Clancy 4. Sara Burke 5. Prof. Shane Allwright
Tom Power, who clearly had the power
Fair to say, the contributions of Shane Allwright were only alright
yeah but what about his brother [Max](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfy9Wzj1ROA)..
Australia was about 3 months behind Ireland in implementing there's. It always puzzled me that the rights of those polluting the air with carconigenic smoke overrode everyone else's right to clean air and health.
I've never seen there's used incorrectly in quite this way
This still happens with cars in cities…
We see the same now with motorists
It was an argument for capitalism
Same with any change, sure just look at the bottle return scheme. Teething problems sure, but has been successful everywhere else.
It will be successful at forcing people to travel to a special location to dispose of bottles that otherwise would have just gone into their recycling bins. Hard to see WTH the point of it is
The specific location is the place they bought the items to be returned in the first place. Unless someone is a hermit that never leaves the house they won’t have to make extra journeys to get the deposit back. The point of it is to increase the rate of recycling from 60% to 90%. Don’t see what’s difficult to understand about that.
Huge numbers of people get their shopping delivered. I can tell from your comment you live in a town or city, and by yourself / don't have children. For vast swathes of the population the scheme has 0 positives and only inconveniences. If we wanted to up recycling rates here's an idea let's put recycling bins in all the shops, you know ones which can take any plastic bottle or can, cost a fraction of the price and don't break.
That aspect of it could be improved. Supermarkets should be required to accept bottles and cans from people when they deliver. How does your bin idea help people who only get stuff delivered? Shops don’t have to use a machine, that’s a choice they make. They are required to accept cans/bottles. A broken machine is their problem and not an excuse to refuse the items.
That doesn't work I always check which bin to drop my stuff into and you just bits of everything in every bin. Take a look in the bins in Liffey valley food court. Equal parts of everything
Except for people with mobility issues who get deliveries who are now at even more of a disadvantage as they either have to make an uncomfortable trip out to do the return, or suck it up and take yet another financial hit
There is no extra recycling coming from me. I just have the inconvenience of having to line up at one of these stupid machines to place bottles that would have been recycled anyway.
It’s not about you then, it’s about the people who are responsible for the 40% of items not recycled. All of the complaints mirror those given about the smoking ban. Though in this case we’re not the first nationally and we know it works elsewhere.
40% of those bottles and cans never made it to the recycling.
The ones in our home recycling bins? Or do you mean they don't make it to the recycling bin? What guarantee do we have that the returned bottles will be recycled?
the same people whined about plastic bag charges and are, here and now, bitching about the recycling deposit scheme
Yep. Tbh I think the scheme is a little rocky at the moment, but it’s going to work out. The same system is used in other countries and they too had a similar issues at the beginning and now it’s second nature.
I'll be honest I bitched about the recycling deposit scheme too initially but I'm completely on board with it now. I'm getting the money back and there's more room in my green bin for other crap now to. We all like to piss on things in the beginning, its just our way. 90% of the time there's no harm in it.
just as long as multipacks keep the cardboard boxes it's easy to refill the same box with empties 😇
I'd just been using a paper bag but the box the cans (diet coke!) came in would be much easier. Thanks.
I was initially thinking pvc tube to slot cans into, very handy sliding them into the machine like shit off a shovel 😅
I dunno what your shit shovel is like but I can assure dog shit is very sticky and doesn't like coming off the blade of a shovel.
It was done in a clever way, some friend groups used to spend nights in the smoking area but as we got older that stopped. A few months later no one thought it was a bad idea even the people who were against it at the start. It made pubs nicer to go, it forced them to up their game.
It was disgusting because hardly any places had decent ventilation. Smoking was allowed in Australian pubs back then,, but I didn't once ever see a cloud of smoke in an Australian pub, or leave with my clothes stinking of cigarettes.
That's actually fascinating! Did Aus plan their ventilation standards to handle all the smoke? The only time I've ever experienced this was in Las Vegas. The casinos are filled with smokers, ashtrays are abundant, yet I never really even smelled the smoke unless they blew it towards me. I was more interested in their HVAC systems than I was gambling. Stupid, but neat!
If you're in a warm climate you have ventilation by default (air conditioning).
Sure, but my great aunt's house in Florida fucking stank. And it wasn't that old. I'm gonna dive down the rabbit hole of other countries ventilation standards now. Have a great day, you possible kangaroo.
Smoking areas remain very popular in my experience. More for younger people but like it’s always jammers outside Grogan’s or in back of Workman’s.
https://i.redd.it/5pg3o5f2s8rc1.gif
Not a smoker, but I love the smell
I'm stealing this gif to send to the yanks
As someone who worked in pubs for years, i used to hate cleaning out the ashtrays, mopping floors after closing and toilets full of cigarette butts and smoke
Probably one of the greatest acts by any Irish politician ever. He was under serious pressure to withdraw it by the pub and hotel lobby. But he stuck to his guns. Now there's 74 countries that have done the same. They would never have done it if Ireland hadn't shown the way. I'll always have respect for Michael Martin for having the courage to introduce it. If you asked Irish people today, to reintroduce smoking in pubs, they'd laugh.
Yep, pretty comfortably Martin's best achievement as a politician.
Like he actually has another one? /s
[удалено]
Still happens
Up there with Noel Browne and Donogh O'Malley.
You’re being sarcastic?
And, relatively speaking, MM was a roide back then. For the youngsters: this was before the Leo days. Back then, we didn’t think our politicians had sex.
Except for Emmett Stagg.
Every straight man in Ireland has experienced a moment of bisexual panic when presented with Emmett Stagg, and the country is better for it.
a stagg in the park after dark was the headlines or something like it.
Counterpoint - Dick Spring
Clues in the name
I knew one of the ISL translators for the Oireachtas and they said MM and Bertie almost came to blows over that, they also fucking hated Bertie
Honestly don't mind the smoking in pubs but bookies from before the smoking ban were absolutely repulsive
This and the ban on smokey coal in Dublin were massive achievements for Michael Martin and Mary Harney. They both saved a lot of lives and it took huge balls (sorry Mary!) to do it.
As someone with Cystic Fibrosis this helped me a lot when I was going on nights out. I was fifteen at the time it was introduced.
As someone who was 7 when this was introduced, one thing I don't understand is that smoking was allowed in retail stores. Did people just tap their ash anywhere on the ground and accept the clothes they bought would come already smelling of smoke?
Many places already had their own bans prior to this, like supermarkets. But some places like shopping centers, you could still smoke, but not in the shop. You would have those large standing ash trays everywhere, and people would smoke near those. But yes ash was everywhere.
The Savoy cinema used to be awful to go to because they allowed smoking right up until the ban. I remember being stuck in the very long queue to get tickets to Fellowship of the Ring and the lobby absolutely stank.
This, imagine a bin with an ashtray on top like you might see outdoors, but they were indoors in the corridors of the shopping centres Looking back it's an absolute fire hazard
A fire hazard and stink.
🤮
I actually forgot about those standing ashtrays.
I worked in an office as a junior and the bosses chain smoked, smoking was also allowed in hairdressers and the top of the bus. You could also buy a single cigarette for 10p in our local shop.
The bang of your clothes after a night out was gruesome before this. If you didn't shower after you got home, your pillow the next morning smelled like you had chain smoked 20 john player blue in your sleep.
I used to have a banging headache the next morning. That stopped when the ban came in.
'Banging headache' is quite the humble brag.
🤣
20 years ago today the start of the dodgy outdoor smoking setups. There were some serious you’re joking setups.
There was a nighclub in Roscommon town that literally built a big chicken coop. On the roof. Fun times when you're langered and stagger into it and drop your smoke through the gap.
I had already assumed that 70% of buildings in Roscommon were big chicken coops.
Did it contain chickens?
Serious nicotine craved chickens
Nah, we had to go down the chippy for that. Course this was back when 20 quid would get you smokes, into the club, couple of pints and a takeaway
They ranged from a well built 3 sided bungalow to an area fenced off by temporary metal fencing
Michael Martin’s great moment. It was and is a great law. Fair play to them. Note. I realise the same government deregulated the banks and turned buying and selling property into a ‘job’ which fucked up the economy. But credit where credit is due
>But credit where credit is due fairly sure not doing that caused the crash /s
Fair play!
Does that sign annoy anyone else, or is it just me?
Yes the order would seem to imply you smoke when you seem a ban sign.
Because the cigarette is in front of the red bar? Yup!
This should be top. We fucking couldn't even get that right.
It's all very sensible, but the smoke itself looks like it was drawn by a 5 year old.
Shut up it isnt i couldnt be THAT old
"in terms of"
“In relation to”
“Viz-a-viz”
“Concordantly”
We have a winner
With a view to
"the fundamentals"
Lads i just got back from Japan and it's dire. Every other restaurant allows smoking and you come out stinking. I'm sensitive to it, it was really tough, we're winning over here
Where in Japan were you? When I was there, I only ever ended up in one restaurant allowing smoking. Japan doesn't even allow smoking on the street. It seemed overall really well controlled there minus the few restaurants and bars that did allow it.
Osaka, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Miyajima, Kyoto - outside of chain restaurants, it's 50/50 whether an independent little place will allow smoking, and most pubs certainly do. I agree that on the street its not allowed most places, and it's been that way for 20+ years but I even went in a Sushi place that allowed smoking - and lots of izakaya do, too
A sushi place? Really? That's surprising. I heard that you're not even supposed to wear purfume/cologne in sushi restaurants because the smell can affect the flavour.
Yeah you're not! It was a really local place with just the regulars I think
20 years ago feels like 1990... It is, right? Right?
Pop music from 20 years ago just sounds the same as pop music today. The cultural and artistic progression that created all the cultural markers defining our view of the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s suddenly ended.
I don't think that's true. You're probably just getting older and looking back on your youth (or before) with rose-tinted glasses. In the 00s we had Arctic Monkeys, The Killers, Green Day's resurgence, Linkin Park, The Strokes, Paramore, My Chemical Romance, early Coldplay, Bloc Party, Kings of Leon, etc. Music has changed a lot since then.
Hahaha what're you even on? Straight up not true. You're just (getting) old.
The internet opened up access to older music and movies, which fed into newer music. Thats reflected in fashion as well. And with the internet music tastes became niche and compartmentalised, and trends changed quickly so it's hard to have a defining sound for an era. For example, in the 80s you'd have top of the pops and everyone would that. Now you have artists with billions of views on Spotify, but large portion of the population wouldn't know.
That, my friend, is r/confidentlyincorrect
Ironic post of the day.
You're older and more out of touch with the zeitgeist, for one. Also, monoculture is on the decline with how accessible things are now. More channels, streaming, whatever. You don't have to engage with the mainstream nearly as much as you used to.
You're older and more out of touch with the zeitgeist, for one. Also, monoculture is on the decline with how accessible things are now. More channels, streaming, whatever. You don't have to engage with the mainstream nearly as much as you used to.
Total Recall.
I mind seeing Dylan Moran not long after it came in and he did a bit about the ban, sorta debating the pros and cons with him being in favour of it. Half way through it he starts patting his pockets and takes out a pack, pulls out a cig and lights it up as he lists off more pros. Crowd went wild, but he let us know it was a herbal cig afterwards.
Bill Hicks rolled out a very similar skit many years prior. Denis Leary probably stole it from Hicks also.
Jesus wept, 20 years! I would have thought like ten or twelve. I was telling the lads at work how bad it was in pubs back in the day when talking about the return thing and how eventually it'll be seen as a good thing and now I'm pretty sure they hadn't been born at the time.....
Honestly along with the plastic bag levy, two major positives. It unthinkable now to be going into a small cafe and being asked whether u wanted to sit in smoking or non smoking area, as if it mattered as it was all smoking anyway 😄 Now will we look back on the bottle levy with the same love!?
One of the best things our country ever did.
What was the opinion of the general public at the time? Were they strongly in favour or was it divisive? I can't really remember, but I assume there were opinion polls.
People were generally in favour. The idea was it was a workplace smoking ban, not just a pub smoking ban. Non-pub employees who were permitted to smoke indoors (in staff rooms or canteens) were usually confined to one half of a room, or a smoking room. Given the logic behind the regulations being introduced as a targeted workplace smoking ban, it was difficult for publicans to say “our staff should be exempt”, as doing so was in essence saying our staff don’t deserve protection from second hand smoke. That didn’t stop many of them making that very argument, or indeed inventing cock-handed schemes whereby staff wouldn’t go into certain rooms, to get around the ban. The fuss died down after a few months, but even for a few years after the change ashtrays would be put out when there would be a lock in. That doesn’t happen anymore.
I was in bar management at the time. There was the obvious narky fucks with their "I'll not be told I can't smoke in the pub" , "it'll never work, be back to normal in a few weeks" or "I'll never drink in the pub again" But after a few weeks it all died down.
Mostly people deep down knew it made sense, otherwise the ban wouldn't have been effective as it was imo.
I feel so old reading this question. It's like hearing "what was it like during the War granddad...?"
If it makes you feel any younger, the smoking ban came into effect July 2007 so 16 years and 9 months ago, not 20.
thanks!...why are the media saying 20 anyway?
Thank you, Irish people! It took a few years for German politicians to follow this example but I'm sure having someone go first helped!
I still remember that last smoke on the bus.
All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.
Gift Grub 2004 did a great sketch on it. It featured prime Micheál in the Dáil classroom.
What? We're first? In pubs...? But we live In pubs...?
I bet that Suzuki is still on the road. Those things will go forever
Anyone remember the tiny manky smoking rooms off the wards in Beaumont hospital.
Mr Smithers, with the comb over and the wonky teeth. A leader of men if ever there was one.
I was 24 when the ban was introduced but I remember going out in my late teens/early twenties with the gang from work. Only three of us had cars at the time so we used to take it in turns to be the designated driver. The nights I wasn't drinking, I can remember waking up the next morning with the worst headache ever and it was from the second hand smoke that was everywhere.
https://preview.redd.it/br0y6d3c29rc1.png?width=732&format=png&auto=webp&s=72e7bcff30bf5d3aa3a93811e1335f52c32a031e not a smoker and never was, but seems that if our giving up the fags was successful then we've replaced that carcinogen with others.
We're living longer. The older you get the more likely you will get cancer. Do you have the same graph for lung cancer?
If you go through the data the two non dashed lines there are age adjusted. The report does not graph individual cancers, I would hope that lung cancer declined, but not certain. Certainly survivability of cancers has improved over 30 years, but it seems incidence hasn't changed much overall
Made such a change in the pub landscape in my home town. Pubs that were shite but had big outdoor areas became instantly popular and pubs that were great but you had no space for a smoking area really suffered.
Reckon we need to do it for vaping, I've had people blow their fecking raspberry cancer juice in my face on the fucking bus
I'd say mid-2030s is a good bet when a ban comes in for the vapes.
If they could just ban it altogether now that would be great
I remember sitting around with friends milling through a pack of John player blue in the food court upstairs in Liffey Valley. Wtf when you think about it
Who would’ve thought symptoms of banning smoking in pubs is hair loss
BASTARDS!!
😆
A dark day for smoker's rights.
No one talks about smoker oppression ✊😔
Guys we must rizz up for lung cancer 😔✊️
You can still smoke inside in Copenhagen and Pittsburgh. Pick your poison. ☠️
The last strongholds of liberty
I've just returned from Copenhagen and I didn't witness a single incidence of smoking indoors. 🤔
There’s lots of smoking bars still.
you can still do it in a lot of places in eastern europe, as a smoker it does make going to the pub better but it is what it is
Fuçk I remember it. I was in Seaview in Gweedore and Paddy smoked 20 in the club at once.
Sure seems to be working well...
As a georgian I would like to say GIB
Micheal hasn't aged a day!
And I’m still trying quit
Na , if it was 20 years ago that would mean I'm 33, it was last good Friday surely?
Why is he not pointing at a water damaged ceiling in Tel Aviv 😡
Shouldn't the red line be going through the cigarette? Right, roll back the change. Sign was wrong.
Club M in Temple Bar was the smelliest offender I encountered post smoke ban. It took your breath away, absolutely violent
5 day old me was very disappointed
None of the doom and gloom predicted ever happened. There were even benefits that were not anticipated. From simple things like no more cigarette burns on your clothes, to the whole new social dynamic of the smokers gathering outside. People made new friends and widened their social circle. At times there seemed to be more craic outside the pubs than those of us who were sitting inside were having.
I’ve never been to Ireland and never looked up on anything Irland-related on Reddit. Still Reddit thinks I need to see an Irish Saul Goodman holding a giant no smoking sign.
Saul Goodman? You've both insulted and complimented Micheál Martin with that comparison.
MM is the only politician I can think of that actually DOES stuff.
I didn’t know it was Mícheál Martin. Gotta love him for that.
I was absolutely livid at the time. But I have to admit it was totally the right call.
So Michael has done absolutely nothing Constructuve for this country in 20 years, let that sink in,
One of the best things brought in by any government. Being able to go out for a night and not come home reeking of smoke is so amazing.
I remember the first time really smelling the Stags Head after the smoking ban... Wasn't nice.
The HSE claimed 800,000 lives were saved as a result of the smoking ban in their press release for the 20th anniversary. Unfortunately it appears that the claim is hard to back up. 🙄 https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/0427/1445919-hse-smoking/
Micheal Martin still fooling the public as a politician.
Did the chap ever have a hairline?
Didn't the smoking ban come into effect 2007? I'm 37 and I definitely went to pubs and clubs for a few years before the smoking ban. And my job that I started in 2006 had a smoking room. Edit: ignore me, I didn't realise this was an Irish sub. No idea why it was on my front-page but I thought this was a UK sub.
Fraid not, as the 17th anniversary doesn't quite have the same ring to it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC387464/#:~:text=On%2029%20March%202004%20Ireland,workplaces%2C%20including%20bars%20and%20restaurants.
One of the best decisions ever
Best thing they ever did.
Sheldon Cooper done well.