Drinking has been decided to be totally fine though, no need to ban that - probably because it's unfashionable to smoke, and the kind of people who come up with these laws find it uncouth. It will also be ridiculous in a few years when the UK inevitably decides to legalise marijuana - totally fine to smoke a joint, but don't you dare put any of that tobacco in it!
Drinking doesn’t affect others as direct as smoking does.
Most of the indoor smoking bans in the U.S. have been based entirely on the fact that second hand smoke affects the employees who are forced to be there.
Further, drinking has a far deeper cultural resonance, so smoking is clearly the lower hanging fruit.
And it’s not like the UK has not been taking action against drinking. For example, they’ve imposed minimum alcohol taxes which have been directly linked to lower consumption.
Drinking affects others much more than smoking does, it's just that it doesn't affect random strangers. In a study of the harms of various substances, alcohol came out on top by a mile for the damage it does to the family and others close to the drinker.
I should qualify the above: it doesn't affect random strangers as often as second-hand smoke does. But drunk driving and drunk violence are a thing, and both can affect anyone.
I think these laws are bizarre morality rituals. Evidence doesn't conclude it has anything to do with public health when you see how vicious alcohol is.
This isn't the smoking gun you think it is though.
Of course Alcohol and Tobacco are high up on the list because they are legal. The percentage of people drinking vs percentage of people doing heroin is not even comparable.
Apparently <0.2% of people in the UK are heroin users. [0].
Apparently above 50% of people in the UK drink once a week or more [1]
What should be surprising is that 0.2% of the population results in the second highest negative impacts on society. Not that something the vast majority partake in causes the most issues, of course it does given the sheer scale of it.
Put simply, imagine if 50% of the UK did Heroin at least once a week, it would be much worse than alcohol usage.
Nobody was ever attacked on the street by a tobacco-addled stranger at 3 in the morning though. Besides, they're not banning indoor smoking, they're banning it entirely - including vaping and other nicotine products.
That cuts down on drinking, except for the alcoholics of course. Scotland also imposed a minimum price per unit on alcohol, in an attempt to further cut consumption:
Right. Booze is straight up naturally occurring, albeit rare. That's why you get drunk monkeys and other wildlife. The animal is like "Actually this moldy fruit is pretty good" - they did absolutely nothing to manufacture booze but here it is.
They're not banning smoking in general (which would be impossible anyway, what are they going to do, make it illegal to set something on fire and breathe it in?), they're banning nicotine products. I also really doubt that they will legalise weed and then say "but of course you're not allowed to smoke it, edibles only".
