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Pro-smoking group Forest will today pressure MPs to amend the smoking ban and allow licensed smoking rooms in pubs and clubs.
Speaking at a House of Commons reception hosted by Tory MP Philip Davies the group's director Simon Clark plans to highlight the plight of pubs to an audience of MPs.
Handing them each a complimentary Montecristo No. 2 cigar, he will say: "Many pubs and clubs have suffered serious economic hardship and for many smokers the social impact has been equally severe.
"It is very unfair, especially on older smokers. For some mental health sufferers the impact of the ban has been devastating.
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Few now expect the new regime to be introduced without any legal challenges. Alan Chalmers, employment partner at the law firm DLA Piper, warns that employers may be forced to ban smoking breaks for workers who want to pop outside for a cigarette. "There has never been a right to smoke at work and employers are not required to provide facilities for their staff to smoke outside, even if smoking has previously been permitted in the workplace," he says. "The smoking ban may lead to an increase in complaints from non-smokers that smokers get extra breaks. If smoking breaks are allowed, employers should have a policy making it clear what is acceptable and what is not."
There are also cultural concerns raised by the ban. Sunday is expected to be the last day of the shisha café, a place where customers smoke the Arabic water-pipe in which fruit-scented tobacco is burnt using coal, passed through an ornate water vessel and inhaled through a hose. The last five to 10 years have seen a rapid growth in the number of these cafés across the country, particularly in Manchester and Birmingham.
On Monday night, the journalist and broadcaster Andrew Neil was the guest speaker at a special event organised by the pro-smoking group Forest to mark the introduction of the ban. He was joined by Antony Worrall Thompson and David Hockney. Forest, which describes the ban as illiberal and draconian, said the event was "possibly the last opportunity for you to eat, drink and smoke at major indoor public event anywhere in the UK".
Pro-smoking group FOREST will tonight make a last-ditch stand against the smoking ban in England by calling for exemptions for pubs and private clubs.
The group will urge the government to allow designated smoking rooms in some pubs and allow private clubs to devise a policy in line with their member's wishes at a dinner for celebrities and MPs at the Savoy Hotel in London.
Simon Clark, director of FOREST, will tell around 400 guests, including MPs and peers: "We have lost the battle but we haven't lost the war. The smoking ban is out of all proportion to the risk from second-hand smoke."
The event - Revolt In Style: A Freedom Dinner - will be hosted by TV chef and restaurateur Antony Worrall Thompson.
Antony Worrall Thompson has said that the impending smoking ban is an "infringement of civil liberties" and that pro-smoking campaigners will "fight on" after the July 1 ban.
Speaking before the Revolt In Style Dinner at the Savoy hotel in London, the television chef and restaurateur insisted that smoking is a sociable activity and that the Irish ban had merely driven people on to the streets.
"If you go to Dublin, everybody is out on the pavement - including the non-smokers," he said, adding that the ban was the "start of a slippery slope".
"Tonight's a celebration, it's not a wake, and we intend to fight on and hope one day that we'll be able to get exemption licences. It's an infringement of civil liberties, really. . . .
Simon Clark, director of pressure group Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco), was telling the event's 400 guests that "we have won the battle but we haven't lost the war".
He said say: "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."
Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas, was saying: "It is a sign of our small-minded times when the most exciting new idea to come out of politics is banning smoking.
Three quarters of people in Scotland believe there should be exemptions to the smoking ban, a poll has suggested.
The Populus survey, for the pro-smoking group Forest, revealed 74% of 1,004 people surveyed thought private clubs should be allowed smoking rooms.
It comes a week ahead of the ban's first anniversary, and found that the same percentage backed the idea of specialist smokers' clubs.
But Health Minister Andy Kerr said the ban had been "a resounding success".
Almost nine out of 10 Scots believe the current smoking ban has gone far enough, according to a new poll.
The research conducted by Populus for smokers’ lobby group FOREST showed that 87 per cent of the Scottish public were opposed to any further restrictions.
It also revealed that a majority were also against a ban on smoking outside pub and clubs (61 per cent), on beaches (61 per cent) and places of work (61 per cent).
Smokers will be denied life-changing operations unless they agree to kick the habit, it was revealed today.
Cash-strapped hospitals say patients will not be given treatments such as hip and knee replacements until they try to give up. Those who fail could be denied treatment all together.
Managers in Norfolk and Newcastle, where trusts are millions of pounds in debt, say smokers are at a greater risk of complications and the move will help save them money on further care.
But critics accused them of putting its finances before the health of its patients - and warned it could lead to surgeons being "brow-beaten" into breaking the Hippocratic Oath. . . .
Smokers, however, claim they are being discriminated against. Neil Rafferty, of the pro-smoking pressure group Forest, said: "This is blackmail, pure and simple.
"Smokers pay their taxes like everyone else. In fact, because of the very high duty on tobacco, they probably pay a lot more tax than the average person.
"They are entitled to free healthcare and health trusts do not have the right to make up conditions."
Other critics say that while there are valid medical reasons for recommending smokers quit before an operation, finances, should not play a part in the decision to operate.
The Lord Harris of High Cross, who died yesterday aged 81, was, with Arthur Seldon, one of the founders of the Institute of Economic Affairs, and perhaps the most successful polemicist of the second half of the 20th century, retrieving and advancing free-market ideas which were initially deeply out of favour and providing the intellectual basis for Margaret Thatcher's reforms of the 1980s. . . .
Harris's other great campaign was for the rights of smokers.
He was chairman of and the prime mover in Forest (the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco), and a member of the Lords and Commons Pipesmokers Club. He was seldom seen without a pipe clenched between his teeth – "You'll like this," he would assure non-smokers around him as he lit up, "it's a meerschaum" – and usually had a couple more in his pockets, in case of emergency.
When in 1995 Network SouthEast introduced a smoking ban on the London to Brighton route, a group of commuters commandeered a carriage and continued to light up. Harris was tireless in raising the subject in newspapers and in the Lords, and produced a 22-page report urging the company to reinstate a smoking carriage.
He then convened a meeting in a pub near Victoria station and heard evidence from both sides in the dispute. "BR is indicted in my view of skulduggery," he declared, pouring particular scorn on a survey which purported to show overwhelming support for the ban.
He was equally sceptical of the claims of the medical establishment that passive smoking was a significant threat to health, publicly challenging the chief medical officer to produce any evidence of harm in a piece entitled Smoking Out the Truth. In 1998 he produced Murder a Cigarette, which was devoted both to extolling the joys of tobacco and casting doubt on the scientific evidence of its dangers.
Ralph Harris, the free marketeer, euro-sceptic and peer who was one of founding thinkers of Thatcherism, has died. He was 81.
Lord Harris of High Cross died at his home in north London after a suspected heart attack. . . .
In later years, Harris was to be heard speaking out against plans to regulate smoking as often as he voiced his opposition to the spread and deepening of the EU. A pipe smoker, he served as a president of Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco).
MPs faced calls to reject a total ban on smoking today as a new poll showed voters favour allowing it in some bars and clubs.
Labour backbenchers are expected to back a ban in all public places across England after being given a free vote on the issue, but a majority said it should continue in some parts of pubs, clubs and bars in the Populus survey for pro-smoking group Forest.
Around two-thirds, 63%, believe people should be allowed to continue to light up in private members' clubs, as originally intended by the Government, and almost as many, 59%, said smoking should still be allowed in "wet" pubs that do not serve food, which Labour ministers had also said would be exempt. Designated smoking rooms in these pubs were backed by 66%, with just 30% opposed.
The findings were presented at a Westminster launch attended by politicians of all parties and prominent restaurateurs.
Simon Clark, director of Forest, wants flexible arrangements. . . .
Jean King, of Cancer Research UK, said the poll results "fly in the face of the overall body of evidence".
Independent polling has repeatedly showed that an overwhelming majority of Britons - currently around 70% - favour a total ban.
Three newspapers in France have been fined between $950 US and $1,180 US for publishing photos of Formula One drivers wearing overalls adorned with tobacco logos.
A court of minor offences in Paris also ruled Le Point, Le Monde and Les Echos must pay the court costs of the group Rights of Non-Smokers, who brought the forth the court action.
Tobacco advertising is illegal in France and a number of publications which print F1 features and photos have had to ensure that only non-branded cars and drivers appear in photographs.
Meanwhile, European governments attempting to skirt the new European Union tobacco advertising ban by providing F1 teams and races with special exemptions won't be able to do so.