banning smoking in bars/pubs

It looks like its coming, as its in the news again today.
I smoke/am stopping smoking so consider me to be totally neutral on this one .
The arguments for the ban are health and safety ones. basically employees are breathing smoke and being affected by that , so should be protected.
Arguments for are based on people wanting to smoke whilst having a drink.

I have to trust the govt statisticians on the former, so let's say they say correct and it does harm employees.
Health and safety laws tend to go over the top, so maybe they should be slightly toned down in their authority.
Why not allow smoking if the bar staff are also smokers ? Thus they will have no/slightly more adverse affects at work than normal. That would leave everyone happy.
I specified that they had to be smokers , as some guys might allow the health to be affected just for the money [or social life] they would get from that employment

The economic arguments.... Irish bars apparently suffered 7% drop in sales after the ban. Most people assume that means 7% of profits. Wrong
There is no rule about the linkage between the two definitions, but simplifying a bar profits [ and applies to every ? business venture].
A bar has overheads, ie fixed costs. These are rates,franchise or whatever cost is involved from being there, rent of the property/lease costs, water rates,electric standing charges, etc- the list is long, with some costs large and others small, but adding up to a large number.
The business has to earn that number £ before it can make a profit. After that.....

A quick example. A business has a turnover of £1,000,000 and a profit of £100,000 with an overhead of £300,000. It loses 10% of its sales .
Turnover is now £900,000. Overhead is £300,000. Stock costs are thus down by 10% ,ie 60,000 at £540,000. Profit is now £60,000 [subtracting those numbers from £900,000]
Thus we have a profit drop of 40%, based on a 10% decrease in turnover.

i picked those numbers for ease of analysis, but they could easily apply .

If employees are nanny state protected, then some will lose their jobs as some employers either downsize staff numbers or go bust.

I suggest the following. Some people object to the smell of smoke. These would avoid pubs which smoke. Thus there's a huge market out there for smoke free bars.
Lets have a system [if we haven't got it already , but I bet we have somewhere in some law -Tubes ?] where pubs can bar smoking if they wish to, then let the people decide.
As fewer people smoke, more will become smoke free, and everyone is happy !

Blair let the PEOPLE decide about smoking. Your job as a government is to inform not to legislate , certainly on this one.

I think the above is simple and elegant and would work in practise.

So I commend it to the House.

In my opinion , therefore, smoking should be allowed , but any employee , should be vetted so they were not affected by smoke.

If anyone is wondering about my smoking habits, as it sounds a bit wierd above: I am stopping smoking by cutting down gradually and starting later each day. As of today I cannot have tobacco until 21.15 after which I can. Tomorrow the start time becomes 21.45. Friends and doctors have all told me I'm mad, but it does work , basically I think, because my body doesnt need smoke during sleep, so it is fairly quiescent till about an hour before I allow myself to light up [I've compressed the argument, but think about it]. Anyway I should have stopped smoking by Saturday.