{"id":496035,"date":"2026-03-26T08:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T08:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/496035\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T08:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T08:00:09","slug":"smoking-ban-in-scotlands-pubs-was-a-pr-war-but-has-it-saved-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/496035\/","title":{"rendered":"Smoking ban in Scotland’s pubs was a ‘PR war’ – but has it saved lives?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Behind the bar, Carol Graham says the ban did not convince her to quit.<\/p>\n

She remembers the legislation as the “end of an era”. <\/p>\n

“I thought people would just stop going to pubs, that they wouldn’t get the business and were going to close – and a few did,” she says.<\/p>\n

Attempts to legislate against smoking did not end with the ban, which was soon followed by the requirement for cigarette packets to have graphic health warnings on them.<\/p>\n

In 2013, the Scottish government set a target of achieving a “tobacco-free” Scotland by 2034 in which no more than 5% of the population smokes, <\/p>\n

A bill making its way through the UK Parliament<\/a> will make it illegal for people born on or after 1 January 2009 to ever buy cigarettes, as well as introducing restrictions on the advertising and sale of vapes.<\/p>\n

Dr Garth Reid of Public Health Scotland describes the ban as a “landmark” policy, adding: “There are people now who have absolutely no memory of having restaurants and bars and buses that there was smoking in.<\/p>\n

“So it’s profoundly changed the social norms and that helps to protect the country in terms of people not starting smoking.” <\/p>\n

However, he notes that more than 8,000 smoking-related deaths continue to be recorded in Scotland every year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Behind the bar, Carol Graham says the ban did not convince her to quit. She remembers the legislation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-496035","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}