I'm a smoker and although i am dreading the day the ban comes in, i must admit that i think less people will start. I started smoking when i was drunk with friends (in bars) and now i smoke between 20 and 30 a day. Although i am going to quit when the ban comes through, the ban is not all good news. The main thing i worry about is sending every drunk person out onto the streets to smoke rather than having designated areas. If you have 200 drunk people out on the streets of Glasgow (just using that as an example as i live there) can you honestly say that there will not be a rise in violence? And as for the NHS, well, there will of course be a good 20 year over lap where the money lost from the smoking ban (the NHS makes a great deal of it's money through the sale of tabacco) and the amount of people being treated for smoking related problems will damage the NHS, but hey, we can cross that bridge when we come to it. At the end of the day, we will only be able to judge the loss or gain of this new law as time passes but with any luck there will be fewer smokers. xxx