It’s 2018 and I’m rolling a cigarette in an east London smoking area. “Can you roll me one?” a friend asks, the neon light of the city bouncing off their expectant face. It’s a chaotic scene: someone to the left of me is crying about an ex-situationship. Someone to the right is giving a passionate speech about adults who wear ballet flats. Someone hot approaches my friend and asks the immortal conversation opener: “Do you have a light?” They’ll end up dating for a few months. This, I think, while blowing smoke into the sky, the nicotine and chilled air providing welcome relief from the loud, stuffy chaos of the club within, is bliss.
Ever since the indoor smoking ban in the UK came into effect in 2007, the smoking area has become the hub of nightlife activity. It’s where Brits go to flirt, gossip, or even just have a few existential moments to themselves. In a country that loves to clamp down on some of our more fun, hedonistic pursuits (see also: the crackdown in raves as a result of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 and no drinking on public transport in London since 2008), the smoking area has alway been that rarest of things: a place to mingle and let loose.
Which makes it all the more worrying that Keir Starmer is considering putting an end to outdoor smoking areas. The younger generation, who already have a hard time socialising, may never know the joys of simply hanging out and chatting nonsense on a night out.
Though a lot of people weren’t happy about it, the indoor smoking ban in 2007 made a lot of sense. People were smoking in cafes and libraries. People were smoking on planes and trains. People who didn’t smoke were constantly being subjected to cigarette smoke, despite the nonconsensual and seriously damaging effects it has on the body (the NHS says that there is no safe exposure to secondhand smoke, with smoke lingering in a room for up to five hours). But the smoking area is where smokers go to get away from everyone else. If you don’t like smoke, or the harm it can inflict, you’re probably not going to spend a great deal of time there. (In the same way that those who think ultra-processed foods aren’t worth the health dangers will probably avoid them.) Think the smoking area sucks? That’s fine – see you on the dancefloor!
Of course, I can see the logic. Smoking is the UK’s single biggest preventable cause of illness and death, killing two-thirds of long-term users and causing roughly 80,000 deaths a year. According to the NHS, even secondhand smoke alone can cause fatal diseases like lung cancer. So yes, there are real dangers. But those can be avoided by not going to the smoking area. There is another side to this debate that needs to be considered: the cultural significance of the smoking area in this country – and the millions of people who still love its illicit allure. By banning the smoking area, Starmer would effectively be banning flirting among the perennially shy. He’d be banning the ways in which plenty of adults make friends. He’d be banning that silly, loopy feeling you get when you’ve been dancing for hours and then feel a great wall of night-time air on your face when you make your way into a thriving smoking area and, for reasons that aren’t really explainable, feel that everything will ultimately turn out fine.
I rarely smoke these days. I’m put off by how it accelerates ageing and I like to smell nice most of the time. But I will live and die by the collective fun of a smoking area. It’s where I’ve had some of my most deep and meaningful chats. It’s where I’ve bonded with people I’ve only just met. It’s where I’ve made some of my more important decisions – like whether to quit a job, or text that person I’m into – and, vitally, it’s where I’ve had some of my most uninhibited moments of joy.
And, even now, on a night out, I’ll often glimpse it in the distance and hear it calling to me. Oh, go on then, I’ll think – and then I’ll approach a stranger I otherwise wouldn’t have spoken to. “Have you got a light?”