The idea
It is a commonly accepted practice that people who create pollution are the ones required by law to stop the pollution. Thus, the clean air acts required factories etc to stop issuing smoke which polluted the atmosphere. The people required to enforce these acts were government inspectors and not the owners of shops, churches, football stadiums, railway stations or, indeed, ordinary people walking about in the streets. It is not a question of the polluters PAYING; it is a question of the polluters STOPPING POLLUTING.
This principle is critical to our understanding of just laws.
POLLUTERS MUST STOP POLLUTING – ORDINARY PEOPLE WHO DO NOT POLLUTE, OUGHT NOT TO BE THE PEOPLE TO ENFORCE THE CESSATION OF POLLUTING.
Why is it important?
As regards the Smoking Ban, it may well be true that tobacco smoke is harmful. If that is true, then tobacco smoke is polluting the atmosphere. People who create this smoke must therefore be stopped from polluting the atmosphere.
But who is going to enforce the cessation of the pollution? Passers by? Shop assistants? Church wardens? Railwaymen? Surely not? Surely, Government inspectors should be the people responsible for enforcement?
But this is precisely the position as it exists at the moment! Innocent people, people who do NOT produce the pollution, are being forced to spend time, effort and money enforcing the cessation of (tobacco smoke) pollution. I speak, of course, of PUBLICANS.
Publicans do not produce the pollution. It is a BAD LAW which forces them to stop the pollution. The smoking ban ought never to have been part of a health act (unless it was for the purpose of banning tobacco completely). If anything, it should have been a safety act.
The Health Act 2006 should be amended to remove the requirement for publicans to enforce the cessation of pollution.