Seanad debates

Wednesday, 7 May 2003

Tobacco and Alcohol Consumption: Motion.

 

It is an outrage to pretend that it is somehow an imposition. The argument I have heard is that it is unenforceable in licensed premises. I was in New York comparatively recently and ended up in a bar which was probably more of a student bar than somebody of my age should have been in – it was an accident. It was a noisy, crowded, young persons' bar. One after another, people got up from their places, went outside the door, smoked a cigarette and came back in. It was an extraordinary experience to end up in a pub in which there was no smoke and suddenly to discover that it is the smell, the taste and the feel of smoke which affronts, not confronts, one the minute one walks inside the door of a pub. In that most libertarian of societies, they have succeeded in banning smoking in public houses, licensed premises and in bars. There is no reason we should not do so here. I, and my party, fully support the Minister for Health and Children in his determination to do so. I cannot understand why parties which support the Minister find it impossible to carry through the logic and to identify the wrongdoing of lobbyists and some politicians who would attempt to prevent the introduction of such a ban. That is inherently wrong.

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