Polonium!

Smoking in public places in Wales has been banned. More specifically smoking in pubs -- where most people like to smoke.

I am an ex-smoker. ish. I smoked through University. I gave it up because a) it was expensive, and 2) I'd already apparently taken two years off my life.

When I think back about what I enjoyed about smoking two things come to mind: the rush, and it was cool. People do look cool smoking. Well, the right people look cool smoking; everyone else looks like a dick. Frank Sinatra, Audrey Hepburn, James Bond -- you want to be these people when you're smoking. That sallow-faced mustachioed woman in the pub with a lager in her hand and a fag jammed in her mouth? The fat guy down the end of the bar in the leather waistcoat? Not so much. The problem is that everyone thinks they are the right people. I know I did.

I’ve been listening to my mother, an ex-smoker, for weeks now about why the smoking ban is such a terrible and unfair thing. As much as I try to be objective and open-minded, I cannot help thinking how totally totally wrong she is.

However, last week a chap I work with popped out for a cigarette, “Well,” he said, “this time next week I will officially be a leper.” Does he have a point? Maybe. Look at it from their point of view: smokers are being incrementally hounded out of public spaces, pushed into the corner (the well ventilated corner) because the majority will not tolerate them. They are being villified for doing what they want to do, for exercising their free will.

It’s not like smokers are a massive drain on resources either. Did you know that the tax revenue from cigarettes more than covers the cost of treating smoking related diseases? Did you know that alcohol is as dangerous as smoking? So what’s the problem with smoking? Why not ban drinking?

These are valid arguments, and a strong philosophical case could be made for your right to smoke. Even if smoking is bad for you, which it is -- it's terrible, the worst idea ever. You may as well go wrap your lips around a car exhaust pipe as smoke a cigarette. Everyone knows smoking kills -- Smokers know this, they're not stupid; they don't need protecting.

But that’s not the point. If only smokers weren’t trying to kill other people too. And make them stink.

If smoking were punching yourself in the face then that would be okay. It would be weird, but hey, you’ve got every right to punch yourself in the face. But smoking is also punching the people around you in the face. Now, if you like to punch yourself in the face at home, and I come round knowing that I might get a stray bunch of fives in the chops then, hey, that’s my own fault. But when I’m out shopping, walking past the exits of municipal buildings, in the pub having a quiet after-work pint, at a restaurant –- I don't appreciate the ol’ knuckle sandwich. You punch my child in the face and we have a problem. You see the clumsy analogy I’m making here? Smokers do have a right to smoke, but that right is negated by the fact that smokers harm the people around them.

The act of drinking in itself doesn’t physically harm those around you. However, drunk people in cars do -- and that’s where the law steps in. Surely it should be the same for smoking?

The problem is that I like the occasional cigar, and in the absence of any decent martini places in Cardiff that just happens to in a pub.