Boris Johnson has dismissed calls for a smoking ban in London parks as “taking bossiness too far”, pitting himself against the commission he set up.
This week, experts from the London Health Commission called on the Mayor to back the ban as part of their recommendations to make London “one of the healthiest cities in the world”.
The Mayor dismissed the proposal as too interventionist and cited a moment of nicotine nostalgia in an Islington park.
He said: “I have to think back to my own life two decades ago when my wife and I had a baby.
“It came to that point when everybody was asleep and I was in such a mood of absolute elation I wandered out into a park in Islington and it was in the middle of winter but I laid on the ground and had a cigar.”
However, some Islington locals have criticised Mr Johnson. One young mum at Islington Green told Islington Now that she supported the committee’s suggestion, explaining: “I take my kids to the park for them to get some fresh air, not a face full of smoke. [Parks are] supposed child friendly places.”
Islington has a variety of parks and other green spaces that would be affected by such a ban. Many have play areas for small children, including Highbury Fields.
Despite a number of measures in recent years designed to curb the numbers of smokers in the capital, it is believed that 1.2m Londoners still have the habit. It is estimated that smoking is behind 51,000 hospital admissions and 8,400 premature deaths every year in the city.
Those who back the proposals argue that smoking in parks might encourage young people to pick up the habit. An average of 67 London schoolchildren take up smoking each day.
Boris’s views are shared by smokers’ rights group Forest, which has dismissed the idea as “outrageous”. The group’s director, Simon Clark, said: “The next thing you know we’ll be banned from smoking in our own gardens in case a whiff of smoke travels over the fence.”
