Smoking ban: positions, rhetoric and individual liberty

Give an outline of the different positions on the smoking ban which are presented in the texts.

The opinion in text 1 is clear. Robin McKie is clearly in favour of the smoking ban. Because he believes that people’s health will improve and that people will live longer if there is a smoking ban.

He talks about some studies in Scotland, Ireland and America that shows that people’s health would improve significantly already after a few months if a smoking ban was introduced.

A. N. Wilson in text 2 is obviously against a smoking ban. He is trying to use the fact that all of England’s greatest writers smoked and that they found their inspiration while smoking. And because of that he asks the question “Is it the end of English literature?” And by doing so he makes a connection between the English culture and smoking. He also points out the fact that the pubs are suffering because of the smoking ban and he says that the British people shouldn’t tolerate the way that the politicians are meddling with their lives.

In text 3 Simon Jenkins comes up with a new point of view, he doesn’t really care about the smoking ban. He thinks about the fact that the law is decreasing liberty. He believes in a thing that John Stuart Mill said: “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant” He doesn’t mind that you aren’t allowed to smoke in public pubs but he doesn’t really think that it is fair that you aren’t allowed to smoke in private clubs and private meetings. In short he wants the government to stop meddling with people’s private affairs. And he says that only cities that wish to follow the law should have to do so, because the people in London probably don’t want the same as the people in Liverpool. So the people in London shouldn’t have a saying in what should happen in Liverpool.