Smokers' last gasp stand before ban
Updated on 25 June 2007
Smokers' rights campaigners will on Monday make a last stand against the July 1 ban by urging the Government to make exceptions for private clubs and pubs.
The lobby group Forest will call for the legislation to be amended to allow some pubs and private members' clubs to provide areas for smokers.
The group will be supported by 400 guests, including politicians and celebrities, at a "Revolt in Style" dinner hosted by celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson.
Forest director Simon Clark will tell those gathered at London's Savoy Hotel: "We have lost the battle but we haven't lost the war.
"We urge the Government to amend the legislation to allow designated smoking rooms in some pubs and allow private clubs to devise a policy on smoking in accordance with their members' wishes.
"Britain is developing into a nanny state. When you leave school you are considered to be an adult. You should be mature enough to make informed choices about eating, drinking, smoking and other activities that give you pleasure but involve a degree of risk.
"Instead, politicians and campaigners are lining up to lecture, harass and insult those of us who choose to smoke a perfectly legal product."
Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas, will say: "It is a sign of our small-minded times when the most exciting new idea to come out of politics is banning smoking.
"These new modern puritans demonise our behaviour and preach illiberalism. We are constantly hectored about how anti-social smoking is, but the real social killjoys are those who don't trust adults to make decisions on their own."
From Sunday, smoking will be banned in virtually all enclosed public places and workplaces in England, such as pubs, restaurants, taxis, offices, factories and shopping centres.
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