Once the smoking ban is implemented by the government, smoking in pubs, bars and clubs will simply disappear. A few years ago it seemed inconceivable that an ashtray in a pub or bar would, relatively soon, be an anachronism.

Despite the twelve million who smoke in Britain today, the awareness and consideration to non-smokers in recent years has been so vast there is definitely a noticeable change in the public’s attitude and perception of smoking. I can go for days without encountering smoking: it is almost as if smoking never existed, and it is now almost impossible to go anywhere in public which does not cater for their non-smoking customers – that is anywhere except from pubs, bars and clubs.

The facts

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The figures show that the majority of smokers start when they are teenagers; accentuating the idea that smoking is seen as fashionable and iconic. One in four 15-year-old girls in the UK smokes; 29 per cent by the time they are in their early twenties – half of whom, if they continue to smoke, will die an average 21 years earlier than their non-smoking peers. (It’s hard to write about smoking as a cultural phenomenon without statistics about death and disease creeping in. Tobacco is, after all, as the Oxford Medical Companion noted in 1994, “the only legally available consumer product which kills people when it is entirely used as intended.”)

Role Models

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Most of us know that smoking is not good for us, but then we see Heath Ledger doing it in Brokeback Mountain and guess what? It does, sort of – no certainly – look cool. Sienna Miller smokes. So does Kate Moss. Both are frequently photographed looking glamorous, fag in hand. Miller and Moss have the ability to make a cigarette look sexy in the same way that they pull of challenging clothing; transforming Ugg boots or tiny cycling shorts. We cannot get Moss or Miller’s legs or hair; so instead, we buy Ugg boots and light a cigarette.

Young people smoke for simple reasons: because it is cool. Still. Bans, truth, wrinkles and expense: none of them seem to matter.