Smoking Ban 'Should Extend To Beer Gardens'

The smoking ban should be extended to pub gardens, outdoor restaurant tables, the school gates and public parks, a new report has suggested.

According to the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), more needs to be done to "de-normalise" smoking and make lighting up even more inconvenient.

It said creating further exclusion zones would encourage more smokers to use alternatives such as e-cigarettes, and claimed the ban would make such outdoor areas more appealing to non-smokers.

The RSPH's findings prompted anger from pro-smoking lobbyists – who said such legislation would "discriminate" against Britons who choose to smoke.

Research by the royal society also suggests there are "alarming" levels of misinformation surrounding tobacco – as 90% of people believe nicotine alone is harmful to health when this is not the case.

In actuality, it is the toxins used to make cigarettes – such as tar and arsenic – which are dangerous, and nicotine itself is no more dangerous than the caffeine in a cup of coffee.

Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the RSPH, is calling for more smokers to switch to e-cigarettes – and said re-branding them as "nicotine sticks or vapourisers" could help distance them from traditional tobacco products.

She said: "Over 100,000 people die from smoking-related disease every year in the UK. While we have made good progress to reduce smoking rates, one in five of us still do.

"Getting people on to nicotine rather than using tobacco would make a big difference to the public's health – clearly there are issues in terms of having smokers addicted to nicotine, but this would move us on from having a serious and costly public health issue from smoking-related disease."

The smokers' lobby group Forest described proposals to rename e-cigarettes as "a silly idea".

Forest director Simon Clark added: "While it makes sense to encourage smokers to switch from combustible cigarettes to electronic cigarettes, public health campaigns should be based on education, not coercion and prohibition.

"For many consumers, e-cigarettes are a recreational product. If public health lobbyists don't understand that, they could sabotage a potentially game-changing device."

Other proposals from the RSPH include making it mandatory for shops which sell tobacco to also stock e-cigarettes – and a clampdown on retailers that regularly break their licence by flouting the display ban and selling cigarettes to under-18s.