What Londoners think

Peter Stringfellow, 63 Club owner "I'm against any interference-from the nanny state but I have to reluctantly agree that banning smoking in public places is a good thing. It is a big health problem and forcing your smoke onto someone who doesn't want it is indefensible. If I'm in a restaurant and someone is smoking near me, I never hesitate to move. I also hate it when I'm walking down the street and someone is smoking in front of me and it wafts straight into my face. I've never smoked in my life and I've lost many friends, as well as my mother, to smoking-related diseases. People are allowed to smoke in the club but I have noticed there are not as many as in the past. However, many of my dancers smoke and I give them lectures about it."

James Delingpole, 38 journalist, lives in Camberwell "I'm not a smoker, but I still think it would be outrageous if smoking were to be banned. People should be free to go to hell in the manner of their choosing. I think that this whole passive smoking thing has been got up by politically correct organisations like the World Health Organisation. I've heard that groups of people who had planned parties or stag weekends to Dublin have been cancelling because of the ban there. And so they should. Why should London go the way of New York and Dublin? Smokers are already in the minority. If it were any other minority Ken Livingstone would be throwing money at them."

Kay Cabrita, 27 MA student, Barnes "I think smoking around food is obnoxious, but I would sooner stop disruptive diners or people who don't tip waiters from entering a restaurant. This fixation and demonisation of smoking and other so-called excessive habits - drinking and eating for example - is just symptomatic of a massively unhealthy and neurotic society. It is ridiculously puritanical to purge society of every form of indulgence. It's a slippery slope: no smoke, no dirt, no tears, no laughter."

Charles Campion, 52 restaurant critic, lives in Worcester "As a non-smoker, I would personally be quite happy if there was a ban in London. However, I recently went to New York and saw some very strange things as a result of the ban. One restaurant even parked a stretch limousine out front so that diners could go out to have a cigarette. So if that is what will happen, I'm not so sure. I think in reality there should be a sensible compromise, whereby there are separate zones for smokers and non-smokers."

Naomi Blum, 23, artist, Hackney "Being a smoker, I don't think that smoking should be banned, but I do think that pubs and restaurants should make provision for well-defined smoking and non-smoking areas, and have extractor fans that work properly. The Government makes loads of money out of cigarette tax, so I think it would be incredibly hypocritical to have a ban. I was speaking to a friend who lives in New York and he was telling me that a crop of speakeasys have opened for illegal smoking. It's ridiculous for smokers to be marginalised like this."

"I know there's been a lot of talk about passive smoking and I've read quite a few journal articles and spoken to my father, who is a doctor, about the subject. Apparently, unless you are surrounded by smokers 24/7, you are unlikely to be affected, so I don't think a ban is really justified. I can understand a ban in restaurants - when you pay a lot of money for a good meal you don't want it to be spoilt by the flavour of smoke - but smoking in pubs and clubs is very much a social thing."

Lucy Cavendish, 37, writer, lives in Oxford "I am now eight months pregnant and, in theory, I should support a ban on smoking in public places. But I don't. I don't really support anything that I believe takes away our civil liberties. It smacks terribly of the nanny state. A ban also makes the massive assumption that most people cannot self-regulate. I have found that there has been a massive shift in the attitude of smokers over the past 10 years. When I am out now - for dinner or a drink - most people ask me if I mind them smoking and then seem to be content to refrain if I tell them it makes me feel sick. Also, as most of my friends are smokers, it would be a pretty dull life if we couldn't go out anywhere. In fact I am so cross about it, I fully intend to vigorously take up smoking once I've given birth."