Allen Carr’s View on the UK Smoking Ban

Allen Carr dismisses the smoking ban as just another exercise in marginalising smokers.

“Smokers are fed up of being pushed around and made to feel like lepers.

Although the ban is important in terms of protecting the health of workers in pubs and nightclubs, if the Government were serious about solving the smoking problem they would offer more effective means of helping smokers to quit rather than merely banning them or offering them nicotine patches and gum.

In my view, smoking bans won’t work – the prohibition experience in 1920’s America proved that. Countries where the smoking bans already exist claim that sales of cigarettes have decreased – but does this take into account the many smokers who now choose to buy their cigarettes on the black market?

To ban smoking is missing the point.

What smokers need more than anything is real help to quit – something the Government. Department of Health and National Health Service fail to deliver.
I’m widely regarded as the world’s leading expert on stopping smoking – but so far the Government, Department of Health and NHS have refused to even meet me.

More and more companies have been using our corporate service to help their employees quit smoking – people like BMW, Coca Cola, Ford, Microsoft, BP and Ikea to name but a few. It appears that, as usual, the private sector is light years ahead of the legistlators.

We invite enquiries about our corporate service in spite of the ban, not because of it.

Good employers are already helping their staff to quit smoking – the commercial reasons alone are compelling enough – in terms of improved productivity, reduced absences through illness and greater harmony in the workplace between smokers and non-smokers.”