The Enforcer

By Jon Kelly
BBC News

Set to lay down the law: John Rafferty, in Edinburgh's George Street

Local councils will be duty-bound to enforce the new anti-smoking law which comes into effect in England on 1 July. But how are authorities in Scotland ensuring their own ban, passed a year earlier, is obeyed?

John Rafferty is undercover. Plain-clothed and incognito behind his pint of Belhaven Best, he quietly scans the revellers in a packed Edinburgh pub.

But the 50-year-old former policeman is no Inspector Rebus, hunting out vice and corruption at the dark heart of affluent Auld Reekie. Nor are his targets the junkies and thieves made notorious by Irvine Welsh's portrayals of the city.

Instead, he is on the lookout for Scotland's newest breed of outlaws: smokers.

John is an enforcement officer for the City of Edinburgh Council, charged with making sure the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces is observed.

And like any good detective, his informants make sure he has eyes and ears across the Scottish capital.

Easy does it

"Recently, in one pub the barman lit up," he chuckles. "I had a phone call about it within half an hour, and sent someone in to have a word within the hour.

COUNTDOWN TO LIGHTS OUT On 1 July, smoking in enclosed public places will be banned across the UK Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales already have such a ban; England's ban starts 1 July The Magazine will count down the weeks with a series of articles about the impact of the ban on life in Britain Countdown to lights out

"But in general, we're not a blue-light service. Our approach is softly-softly. If there's a problem we try to talk it through."

His carefully-balanced carrot-and-stick approach has paid dividends in an area where it was widely predicted the ban would create havoc.

Perhaps more than any other city in the UK, Edinburgh's identity is closely bound up with its dark, gloomy drinking dens - a fug of smoke always having hung inside them alongside the smell of hops and a murmur of Caledonian accents.

The Scottish press predicted that the ban would be impossible to enforce, that 5,000 bar staff would lose their jobs, that violence would soar as drinkers refused to put out their cigarettes.

But in defiance of all the scare stories, the ban has proved an unqualified success since it came into effect in March 2006.

In a city where it is estimated that 23-25% of the population are smokers, the air of every pub and nightclub is tar-free.

Only nine fixed-penalty notices have been issued by the council for breaches of the new law. Just one of these was given to a licensed premise - and even that was a pub which put up an outdoor shelter incorrectly.

Flung out

With a gaggle of smokers dutifully congregating outside the doorway of every watering hole, John believes that it has only been because the public have policed themselves that the law has been so broadly upheld.

MAGAZINE'S QUITTERS' PANEL Four smokers planning to kick the habit by 1 July

"The fact is that pub regulars don't want to see their local closed down," he says. "If anyone starts smoking, the landlord or landlady stands up and says: 'Right, the bar's closed.' The regulars then make sure it doesn't stay closed for long.

"In one pub in Leith, I heard about a bloke who was flung out the door by all the other drinkers when he lit up."

Indeed, many bar owners have found trade has risen as customers enjoy the novelty of smoke-free drinking.

At the Hampton Hotel near Murrayfield stadium, supervisor Marta Krupa, 27, greets John warmly when he drops by for a quick check-up.

"Not only have more people been coming in, it's great for me not having to go home stinking of smoke," she says.

But for all that he is pragmatic about the need to keep the local licensed trade onside, John is a passionate supporter of the ban and the impact it has made on public health in Scotland.

Enviable jobs

His own father died aged 54 after a lifetime of heavy smoking, and he tells of an acquaintance who lost both her legs as a result, he believes, of passive smoking.

He wouldn't complain about not being allowed to take heroin in a production of Trainspotting John Rafferty on Mel Smith

"She worked as a barmaid in working men's clubs from the age of 20," he grimaces. "Never touched a cigarette in her life, but the doctors said they'd never seen a worse set of lungs.

"She was left with two stumps where her legs should have been. I don't have any trouble getting up in the morning when I think of her."

With the ban so far needing little in the way of enforcement, John's job must appear to most drinkers an extremely enviable one: touring Edinburgh's pubs, stopping for a drink and a chat here and there.

Only on a couple of occasions have there been drawbacks. For a while he was forced to start his working days at dawn after receiving a tip-off that some of Edinburgh's dockside bars, which open at 0600, were flouting the ban because they assumed no-one would get up early enough to check on them.

Stage cigarettes

And he was thrust into the headlines during last summer's Edinburgh Festival when the actor Mel Smith, playing Winston Churchill in a stage production, publicly declared he was going to flout the law and smoke a cigar onstage.

John Rafferty on patrol in the Murrayfield hotel in Edinburgh

Smith was only deterred when the council informed him that it would be the venue, and not Smith himself, who would be punished, meaning that all the other productions it was hosting would have to be cancelled.

"It was crazy," John recalls. "The council's press officer told me the story was getting more hits on the BBC News website than the war in Lebanon.

"But it was all very silly, really. There are lots of good stage cigarettes and cigars you can get which look as though they're lit.

"And he wouldn't complain about not being allowed to take heroin in a production of Trainspotting."

And with his face having become well-known around the city, there are few places he can go without being jokingly asked by revellers if he fancies a ciggie or whether he's got a light.

"Doesn't bother me in the slightest," John smiles. "As long as they know I'm out there, that's my job done."

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Add your comments on this story, using the form below.

This article shows just how easy it is to target smokers. The comments about 'heroin' and 'Trainspotting' are another example of hysteria and the use of extreme tactics to justify having a go at those of us who smoke. The recipe is simple: 1 A story of someone's death 2 A bit of spin about the nation's health 3 Mixed together by a patronising do-gooder Hey-presto, justifiable persecution
Nick, London

I am a smoker and recently went to Edinburgh for a weekend. Before my trip I was dead against the ban, but after going to Edinburgh I have realised how nice it is to come home and not stink of smoke, and it wasn't too bad to have to stand outside. If it is best for people's health and will help the constant strain on our NHS then why not?
Kate, Exeter

I do not know where your reporters are getting their information from but it certainly is not from the vast majority of Edinburgh pubs! I am from 'auld reekie', pardon the pun, but from what I have been told by bar staff and bingo hall workers, the ban has had a detrimental effect on jobs, (especially within the bingo establishment, with halls closing), are your reporters the same people who write the questions for the (obviously fixed) eggheads TV show?
Scott , Grimsby, NE Lincs

Top stuff! I'm really looking forward to the 1st July, when I can return to my favourite local pub and not be greeted by a dark cloud of smoke when I open the door. Best bit of government legislation in my life time!
Joe Corrall, St.Ives, Cambs

...are we becoming a nation of informers? ringing up big brother to whine about the habits of people we don't like? I don't smoke, but find it questionable is the way that we are being encouraged in radio ads to inform on people if they look 'suspicious' or in this case, phone the police if a barman lights a cigarette. what next? children informing on their parents? sounds chillingly familiar.
Dan, London

Those employed to sit in pubs looking out for smokers would be better employed out on the streets trying to reduce real crime.
Marion Wilson, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Fantastic to hear of an enforcement officer really putting himself about. I hope my local council take their responsibility as seriously when the ban hits England. Having just returned from a weekend in Edinburgh the lack of smoke was amazing, even the smokers in our party preferred the clean air inside and the fact you didn't stink at the end of the night. Smoke free... it's the future ;)
Copey, derby. UK

Business in Scottish pubs dropped 11% after the ban was introduced. Most Landlords were dreading the onset of a cold winter (thankfully spared) as those customers who smoked outside, would just stay at home, rather than freeze. I look forward to the day when all the anti smoking, anti drinking fraternity discover there tax bills soaring to counter-balance the loss of revenue that us evil smokers and drinkers contribute to the Treasury (which is six times greater than the additional cost we are supposed to cost the NHS)
Frank, Oxford

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