Lyndsay Moss: Time to reclaim our streets from persistent smokers

A FUN new game has emerged over the past couple of years. I like to call it pavement hopscotch. Imagine the scene: it is about 10pm, you are walking down Glasgow's Sauchiehall Street on your way back from the cinema, but the path that is so easily negotiated during the day, is now strewn with annoying obstacles – or smokers as they are more commonly known.

To negotiate your way past this smouldering flotsam and jetsam, you must do a little jig, which requires you to repeatedly jump on and off the pavement, hopefully avoiding all cars, buses and students being sick in the gutter. It is not a pretty sight.

All of this is as a result of the ban on smoking in public places, which has forced tobacco fans out of the pubs and on to the streets to have a quick puff between drinks.

This has led to pavements clogged with smokers who seem oblivious to the fact they are in the way. In fact, they seem to have made themselves quite at home, in good weather and, more frequently, bad.

Don't get me wrong, the smoking ban has been a fantastic success. Next month marks the third anniversary of the landmark legislation that removed the stinking and cancer-causing fumes from our public places.

In a relatively short space of time, we have become used to going out and not spending our evenings peering through the indoor smog. We have forgotten the wretched aroma that used to hang about on our clothes and in our hair for days. Sorry smokers, you'll still have to put up with this particular pleasure.

So long ago is the era of indoor smoking that now and then I catch a sniff of a cigarette and feel nostalgic. The smell of smoke is linked to a past, where a pint cost 50p (on student nights and if you kept the same glass all evening) and you did not have to worry about getting up early to go to work.

Smoking would be a forgotten relic if it were not for the lingerers hanging around our streets having a crafty fag before retreating back inside, their guilty pleasure over (for at least ten minutes anyway).

Knowing what to do with the remaining smokers is a tricky one. Some pubs have little beer gardens out back where they can be neatly stored like sheep in a pen. But in our city centres, most have to shove them out front where they just get in the way of other people trying to get from A to B without stopping for a C(igarette).

So what can be done? Personally, I would set up smoking outposts on desolate wasteland, where smokers could go to indulge in their habit. Sadly, I know this is not a plausible suggestion and, anyway, what has the desolate wasteland done to hurt anyone?

But I do think there is weight to the arguments of campaigners who have suggested smoking exclusion zones around schools and playgrounds.

One of the nation's biggest challenges is to stop a new generation of smokers emerging. The less children see of smoking – and this must include on TV and in the home as well – the less they are likely to view it as normal, something that you just start doing, a rite of passage. As the Scottish Government continues its efforts to cut smoking rates, it would perhaps like to consider how we could extend the success of the indoor smoking ban to little bits of the outdoors.

While I do not expect that ministers will be able to halt the increasing games of pavement hopscotch on the streets of Scotland, they could help denormalise the habit further in areas where impressionable children go about their business.

As for the smokers, stood outside in the wind and rain, why not ditch the cigarettes for good and join us in the warm? You would also not have to put up with that angry-looking, tutting female throwing you dirty looks as she hops on to the road for the millionth time.

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