I detest smoking. It's an awful habit, terrible for your health and I urge anyone to quit.
But. At some stage, we have to trust people to make their own decisions.
If we banned any harmful habit, we'd be living very boring lives.
Where do we draw the line? Alcohol? Unhealthy food? Driving? Contact sport? Why even bother leaving the house at all?
The line of 'protecting' the NHS just doesn't wash. You're in a pub garden. If someone is having a cigarette a few tables away, you are not in any danger. At all.
'Protect' the NHS is the most dangerous slogan in my lifetime. I certainly don't want to see that toxic principle applied to all other areas of society.
Educate people, tell them the facts, and let them make their own decisions. We're all big enough and ugly enough to do that.
Outsourcing responsibility to Government has to stop.
It didn't work during lockdown, and it won't work now.