That On-Stage Smoking Ban
In spite of expectations, Northern Ireland Health Minister Michael McGimpsey has decided not to allow smoking on stage, leaving (in the UK) only England sensible enough to realise that you can’t change a whole body of drama by legislation. The arguments in favour of making stage performances an exception have been rehearsed so often they are not worth repeating here but one comment is worth making.
Michael Diskin, executive director of Belfast’s Lyric Theatre, told The Stage, “I’m perfectly happy with a smoking ban but the health lobby treated this as a moral rather than a health issue and I don’t understand why the established precedent of herbal cigarettes wasn’t considered as a viable option.”
And that’s it in a nutshell: the whole tenor of anti-smoking propaganda has changed from “protecting the nation’s health” to making the whole thing a matter of morality and, in the process, demonising smokers. And what an odd kind of morality it is! We can show, as Owen McCafferty said, all kinds of debauchery on stage - think Blasted with oral sex, rape, urination, cannibalism - in every part of the UK, but in Ireland, Scotland and Wales we can’t show people smoking.
The smoking of one or even more cigarettes on a stage in theatre is not going to put the audience’s health at risk as by the time the smoke reaches even the front row it will have begun to dissipate - or, if some think it may, why not put up the same kind of warning notice that we do when strobe lighting is used? The risk of a strobe triggering an epileptic fit is far larger than the risk to health of breathing the amount of smoke that will be experienced in most theatres from a cigarette being lit on stage, but we don’t ban strobes. Nor do we ban sudden explosions, even though it could be argued that they could have a serious effect on someone with a heart condition. No, again we simply give a warning that this will happen during the play and leave it to the individual to decide whether to take the risk. As we do if there is full or partial nudity, scenes of a sexual nature or scenes of violence in a play or film or TV programme.
Adult should be credited with the good sense to be able to make decisions for themselves. We don’t need protecting every second of our lives: for goodness sakes, we already have warnings on packets of food that when cooked it will be hot!
McCafferty is right, too, about it being a form of censorship. In their wisdom the NI, Scottish and Welsh governments have decided that smoking is a “bad thing” and we are therefore not to be allowed to see that it exists in a play. How soon before they start applying the same principle to other things? Opposition to the government, for instance?
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
July 1st, 2007 at 05:56 pm
Thanks for the Niemoller quotation. It should be cited often to everyone who thinks current events do not apply to them.