The "big issue" with all this is that even in a smoking room enviroment there could be staff who have to enter that room ,one way or the other and they are going to be subjected to passive smoking.
In an ideal world I suppose you would have to employ staff who smoke to operate in the smoking areas , but that is never going to work in practise.
I am absolutley sure it will at least cut peoples smoking down, it has to unless they would be nipping out side every 20 mins for a fag.
I can remember bans on airplanes , bans in cinemas , bans in shopping centres but mainly a ban in the work place.
I work in IT and not so many years ago we could smoke in the main offices. There was always a degree of conflict between "a few moaning women" about the smoke etc etc but nothing was ever done about it.
However when a smoking ban came in to force ,after an initial knee jerk reaction from us "unclean" smokers, we accepted it .
Within no time nobody gave it another thought, okay we nipped off for a fag between breaks , but to be honest I bet it cut me down by 5 or 6 fags at least a day.
So it must work, a gun to the smokers head tactic but it works.
If the government really wanted to stamp it out , why not ban it or put tax up to a ridiculous extent, some will say rightly they already have.Make fags £15 a pack.
The truth of the matter is they want people tp smoke , as much as they want us to drive our cars and drink alcohol.Either that or brace yourselves for a massive hike in income tax or other robbing taxes like capital gains tax or inheritance tax, THATS ANOTHER STORY :( :(