PRESS RELEASE – IMMEDIATE                                                           30 April 2007

NORTHERN IRELAND'S SMOKING BAN MAY HAVE REVERSE EFFECT

“Northern Ireland's smoking ban  won't stop everybody smoking – in fact it may have the reverse effect,” says James Leavey, the UK's leading smoker-friendly journalist and broadcaster - and author of a series of smokers' guides  to Europe's cities, including London, Belfast and – for the next issue – Dublin -  for the European Cigar Cult Journal, Europe's leading cigar magazine.

“Now that Northern Ireland's smokers are on public display outside bars and clubs – many of them clearly enjoying themselves - this may encourage more people to smoke.  Besides, with Northern Ireland's booming economy there's a lot to celebrate – preferably with a fine cigar! And then there's all that smirting – smoking and flirting – that will be going on, rather like in Dublin.

“Meanwhile, visitors to Northern Ireland will still be able to smoke in designated 'smoking' rooms in hotels and guest-houses, for guests can do what they like in their rooms under the law of hotel etiquette – once they check-in, their guest room becomes their home.  

“This is the first time in history when Governments have banned the public enjoyment of a product, i.e. tobacco, that is still legally on sale.  But it won't stop Northern Ireland's core smokers from lighting up somewhere – probably in the smoker-friendly lock-ins in the Province's rural or out of the way pubs and bars, late at night when all the puritanical non-smokers have gone home – which is what has been happening in the Republic of Ireland.  And can Northern Ireland's rural pubs and bars really afford to turn away smokers – who may be some of their oldest customers? 

“And who is going to police this ban?  Northern Ireland's Environmental Health officers already have enough to do without this extra burden.  Mind you, there should be plenty of money available to pay for the overtime – Northern Ireland's smokers are among the most highly taxed in the world.

“The irony is that the smoking bans have been imposed by the widespread belief that passive smoking is a significant health hazard, despite the fact that there has never been any serious statistical scientific evidence to prove this.”

ends

NOTES FOR EDITORS

James Leavey is Britain's and Ireland's most smoker-friendly freelance journalist and broadcaster, and moved from London to Cowes on the Isle of Wight, four years ago, where the Cuban flag now flutters from his garden's flagpole.  He has written for over 80 consumer and trade publications, including Radio Times, Daily Mirror, The Independent and The European – and on smoking and cigars for the Daily Express, European Business, Whisky, Wine, SquareMeal, Evening Standard, ES, Time Out, Motor Boat and Yachting, Classic Cigar, Stuff for Men, World Tobacco, Tobacco Europe, Cigar Style, and the UK's Cigar Buyer (for which he is currently chief cigars taster), among many other publications.

Leavey is best known as editor of The FOREST Guide to Smoking in London and the FOREST Smoker’s Guide to Scotland – the world’s first travel books for smokers, which sparked off enormous worldwide media coverage, including Time magazine, Sky News, Fox News, CNN, BBC 24, Playboy,  The Sunday Times, The Guardian, and Die Welt.  He has also broadcast on smoking on television and radio around the world, and was featured in BBC Horizon's major documentary on smoking around the world -  'We Love Cigarettes'.

James Leavey has smoked (usually Havana or Dominican cigars) in some unusual places around the world:

- a  voodoo ceremony in the heart of Basil

- a Bedouin tent in Dubai

- in the Copacabana club in Havana while doing the lambada

- in the sewers of Vienna (in the footsteps of Harry Lime) and managed to avoid blowing up the city

- in the Millennium Dome, London (the ONLY person ever to smoke a cigar inside that Dome!)

- on the Guys and Dolls set on stage at the Royal National Theatre in London (and managed to set fire to the set despite the fact that the chief fire officer and security man were standing next to him one holding a large ashtray and the other a bucket of sand!)

- on stage at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin

- in a cell inside Dublin's main prison (last year, for BBC Horizon)

- in a Radio 4 producer's office in Broadcasting House, 3 months after they banned smoking in the building

- in a Rio de Janeiro favela (shanty town)

- in a short film called 'Smoker's Corner' made 5-6 years ago which co-starred fellow smokers, Peter Doherty (who admitted he smoked anything and everything) and Antony Worral Thomson

- in a Cuban diplomat's luxurious home in Havana (just before Christmas – the diplomat was busy flogging some Cuban cigar antiques, discreetly)

- in Havana with Alberto Korda (who took the famous photo of Che Guevara)

- in Jesse Helms' office in the Senate, Washington DC (Helms was the man who pushed the Cuban Embargo and Leavey dropped Cuban ash all over his office and into his otherwise empty ashtray that was on his desk)

- halfway up an Austrian mountain (Leavey used the Havana as a walking stick...)

- in the Europa hotel bar in Belfast just after a bomb (we thought) went off

- with the Loch Ness Monster in Inverness (OK, he was only a statue but Leavey did leave a cigar in Nessie's mouth)

A selection of James Leavey's smoker-friendly articles and interviews can be found on www.forces.org – the world's largest pro-smoking website - which receives NO donations or subsidies from tobacco companies.

Contact details: 01983 291679 or mobile 07932 039054.

E-mail: jamesleavey@toffeeland.fsnet.co.uk