When Lara Bose heard about Labour’s proposed ban on outdoor smoking areas, she was shocked. “Literally living with the person I got with in the smoking area three years ago. Keir hates love!” she posted on X.

Bose, 21, met her partner, Ben, in the outdoor smoking section of a venue in London three years ago, where they shared a cigarette and their first kiss. Describing their fateful encounter at the Under the Bridge venue at Stamford Bridge stadium in 2021, Bose said she spotted Ben, a student at the same university, and found him attractive and charming.

“There were so many people and it was so loud and so, in the end, I just asked him if he wanted to smoke and then we went out,” she said. “We just stayed out there talking until the bar closed and they made us leave. We’ve been pretty much together ever since.”

It was revealed this week that the government is considering a ban on smoking in outdoor places in England, including spaces and pavements outside clubs, bars and universities. The proposals quickly sparked widespread discussion, with the hospitality industry issuing stark warnings that the ban would be another “nail in the coffin” for struggling venues.

Several social media users said smoking areas were the focal point of a night out, a place to chat and flirt – and smoke – with strangers.

Although Bose said she understood the public health argument for the ban, she expressed concern about the lack of social spaces. “My partner has asthma; so does my dad. I’ve had pneumonia, likely as a result of smoking,” she said, but added that outdoor smoking areas were “one of the last places where people feel able to just strike up a conversation with a complete stranger”.

Office for National Statistics figures from last year showed dementia as the leading cause of death in England and Wales, but smoking was another major factor in preventable illness and death.

Dr Layla McCay, the director of policy at the NHS Confederation, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday: “It is absolutely the health challenge of our time. It’s the leading cause of preventable illness in the UK, so we are heartened to see that progress is being made and that the intention is moving forward to really address one of Britain’s main drivers of health inequalities.”

Nixon Kohyrelon, 25, a ticket broker who lives in Coventry, said he had never smoked, but echoed similar sentiments to Bose on socialising outside venues: “In the smoking area, that’s when the magic happens.”

Kohyrelon said he and his friends would often speak to people they were attracted to and meet strangers in the smoking areas of nightclubs. “The easiest way is: ‘Have you got a cigarette?’ And from this magic word, everything can happen.”

Sophie, 25, met her boyfriend of seven years, Nick, 27, on her first day at university in the smoking area of their accommodation. “There’s every chance we might never have met if we didn’t have that smoking ice-breaker,” she said. “Now he’s moved to the UK, we live together, and I owe it all to that pouch of Golden Virginia tobacco.”

Sophie said she understood the dangers of smoking, but described smoking areas as “part of British culture”. “It’s a chance for people to meet in person rather than on apps – it’s buzzy and fun and I wouldn’t change it. I’ve met my boyfriend, made friends and cemented relationships through smoking areas, and I’d be gutted for that to be lost.”

The UK is considering stricter rules on outdoor smoking to try and take pressure off the National Health Service, Prime Minister Keir Starmer confirmed today.

Ministers are discussing plans to ban smoking in pub gardens, outdoor restaurants, outside hospitals and sports grounds, leaked documents viewed by The Sun showed.

Smoking killed at least 74,800 people in the U.K. in 2019, making it one of the biggest causes of preventable deaths.

“We are going to take decisions in this space. More details will be revealed, but this is a preventable series of deaths and we’ve got to take the action to reduce the burden on the NHS and reduce the burden on the taxpayer,” Starmer told the BBC when asked about the reports.

The measures could be included in an updated version of the Tobacco & Vapes Bill, first introduced by the last government.

The original bill would eventually restrict the sale of tobacco to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009. Starmer’s Labour promised to honor the generational ban during this year’s election campaign.

The Conservatives also proposed a ban on disposable vapes, restricting vape flavors and packaging — measures that are strongly supported by doctors. Labour is also reviewing proposals to restrict the sale and supply of disposable vapes; the government is expected to outline plans after the parliament returns from its summer break.

The proposal has been welcomed by health campaigners who believe the measure would help protect people from the dangers of second-hand smoke.

But the proposal has drawn heavy criticism from others, with accusations of the government imposing on people's freedoms and being the “final nail in the coffin” of the hospitality industry.

The prospect was widely criticized by hospitality bosses, who said it would be an overreach of the state and another potential blow to their finances.

Smoking in the U.K. has been banned inside pubs, restaurants and most workplaces since 2007. Still, smoking-related illnesses remain a drain on the National Health Service, costing it over 2.5 billion pounds a year in England alone, according to figures from the NHS.

“My starting point on this is to remind everybody that over 80,000 people lose their lives every year because of smoking,” Starmer said in Paris while visiting French President Emmanuel Macron. “So, yes, we are going to take decisions in this space, more details will be revealed, but this is a preventable series of deaths and we’ve got to take action to reduce the burden on the NHS and the taxpayer.”

Starmer’s Labour government, which was elected in July, has already said it will reintroduce the former Conservative administration’s legislation to outlaw the sale of tobacco to anyone born on or after January 2009. Under that plan, which didn’t become law because the election was called early, the legal age that people in England can buy cigarettes will be raised by one year, every year until it is eventually illegal for the whole population.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of the health charity Action on Smoking and Health, or ASH, said the priority for the government has to be bringing back that bill to severely reduce smoking among the next generation.

“ASH would support the inclusion of powers to extend smoke-free laws outdoors, subject to consultation,” she said. “However, it’s also important to ensure that there are still outdoor areas where people who smoke can smoke in the open air, rather than inside their homes.”

Scores of countries around the world have banned smoking in indoor environments, and many have extended those bans outdoors, though not necessarily to bars and restaurants.

The number of people who smoke in the U.K. has declined by two-thirds since the 1970s, but some 6.4 million people in the country — or about 13% of the population — still smoke, according to official figures. In 2007, the legal age of sale for tobacco was raised from 16 to 18 alongside the smoking ban indoors.

While health professionals broadly welcomed the prospect of a smoking ban outdoors, others argued that it is an unnecessary intrusion by the state on people’s lifestyle choices and another potential burden on businesses still struggling to recoup the losses during the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent surge in energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which raised operating costs and depressed sales.

The number of pub closures increased to 80 per month over the first three months of 2024, up by 51% compared with the same period last year, according to official data for England and Wales.

“As we consider the implications of these potential restrictions, we must question whether such an approach is truly in the public interest, or whether it risks over-regulation at the cost of personal freedom and business viability,” said Michael Kill, chief executive of the Night Time Industries Association.

Clive Watson, pub entrepreneur and chairman of Inda pub group, said it’s a “bonkers” idea that “will encourage customers to stay at home, meaning there is no health upside.”

Our politicians are a strange bunch. Surprisingly, most are not particularly sociable, and certainly very few could be classified as pub types. This is a great pity as every pub is a parliament – a place where we discuss the issues of the day on a local, national, or even international level. But now the death knell of the traditional British pub may well have been sounded. 

The 2006 indoor smoking ban, which even included private members’ clubs, saw an inevitable decline in pub takings. This has led, in part, to the closure of thousands of pubs and clubs since that time. Especially hard hit were the traditional boozers and the working men’s clubs, as to survive, many pubs had to become restaurants. This is fine up to a point, but what we are losing is community, conversation, debate, humour, and dare I say it, even banter. 

Smoking may well be a 20th-century phenomenon, but there are still millions who choose to engage. And smoking seems much more prevalent amongst pub-goers than it is in the general population. Since the 2006 ban, pubs and clubs have had to be imaginative and spent a lot of money to provide smoking shelters. And for those fortunate enough to be outside urban areas, pub gardens have been a sanctuary.

But once again, the Labour Party is showing its authoritarian socialist state control instincts and mentality. The rumoured ban on smoking in pub gardens or on the pavement outside pubs will kill off the traditional pub forever. For my own part, I simply would not go to the pub ever again if these restrictions are imposed. I know that many who read this will be non-smokers and some perhaps anti-smokers. Intolerance of the behaviour of others and the belief in bans and state control seem to be more popular today than ever.

Continued support for the ever-proper lockdown measures during the pandemic dismayed me but rather proved the point. Let me warn you, they may well come for you next. A decade ago we were told that 28 units of alcohol per week was the considered safe limit. Not only has that now been halved to 14, but the increasingly awful World Health Organization has now publicly suggested that there is no safe alcohol limit.

The Puritans are on the march. We must all be controlled for our own good. I expect the anti-alcohol debate, with corresponding levels of national propaganda, to pick up pace over the coming years. Yet there is no discussion about a wholesale drugs epidemic causing huge social, psychological, and physical harm right throughout our country. The war on drugs was lost decades ago.

This all goes to prove the point that the instincts of this Labour government are to control legal activity, whereas they realise they have no chance, and perhaps not even the will, to control illegal activity. But here is a warning. The most anti-smoking country in the world that I have been to is Australia, where restrictions on where people can smoke and excessive taxation of a packet of cigarettes, which now cost the equivalent of $35, have turned the tobacco trade into the hands of criminals. 

Right across Australia, illegal cigarettes can be bought under the counter from shops. But behind all this are gangs making vast amounts of money. Why bother with cocaine anymore, when tobacco is so much more profitable? The levels of violence this has led to in Melbourne, for example, have seen the suspects firebombing of tobacco shops. Better, perhaps, to educate the public, and let grown-ups make their own decisions about how they live their lives.

I fully expect, whoever the next leader of the Conservative Party is, to fully go along with a ban on smoking in virtually all areas.