The debate leading to this piece of legislation has been a predictable plod towards common sense, sidestepping, as it has done, all the duplicitous, corrupt nonsense from the official pro-smoking lobby, pretending to fight for civil liberties whilst conveniently forgetting to highlight their funding from tobacco multinationals. In the end though, the arguments from those losers with brown teeth, yellow fingers and skin like Gollum, that the nanny state has gone too far, were defeated not by the moral reprehensibility of their selfishness harming others, but by straightforward financial considerations.

If you knowingly expose your staff/customers/the general public to a toxic substance that can kill them, they may sue you, they will almost certainly win and it will cost you a lot of money. Nothing convinces Corporate Scotland to change its ways more conclusively than the thought of financial loss.

That the Swallow Hotel group are challenging this in the courts, with the surreal argument that a smoking ban is an affront to human rights, should not be any cause for concern. Nobody will suffer. They are simply going to lose a great deal of money, which they can doubtless claim back in a weekend by bumping up the cost of the soft-porn in-room pay movies during a conference of mono-blocking sales reps. Nor do the arguments of health fascism hold much water, since the government is only protecting shared public places, leaving the smoker to enjoy blowing cancer-inducing toxins all over his or her children in the confines of a car, their home or anywhere else they choose.

Perhaps sensibly drafted legislation could be constructed to stop that too, but since no-one is yet proposing it smokers would be wise to be grateful for the “human right” to damage their children’s health and shut the hell up.

That all this was an almost unanimous cross-party MSP decision, well in advance of Westminster and without the ridiculous confusing mess that is still being tortuously mangled in England and Wales, makes me want to kiss the whole blooming lot of them. Well, perhaps I draw the line at Annabel Goldie, but you get the idea that on this occasion I’m pretty damn proud of our Scottish parliament. Because debating points aside, my response to this week leading up to this historic ban is entirely emotional.

I grew up in a world of smokers, in the house, in my college, in my work. The difference then was that the smokers, particularly at home, had absolutely no idea whatsoever that it was harming them or me. If they had known, they wouldn’t have started smoking. I’m absolutely certain of that. When I left our house it was out into a world that was also full of other people’s smoke. Everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. In the cinema, on the bus, in shops, offices I worked in, you name it. Non-smokers like me were not permitted to complain because there was nothing wrong in smoking, and everyone did it.

In the museum I worked in, to enjoy a coffee break meant breathing in everyone’s smoke in the staff room. These were lovely kind, considerate, clever people whom I adored, and rather than miss out on their amusing company and gossip, I sat with them and inhaled their smoke instead of exiling myself to the smoke-free areas of the museum to have coffee alone. One of the heaviest smokers, a wonderful wise and witty woman I absolutely worshiped, died of smoking-related cancer and I miss her still.

I met friends in Glasgow pubs to go on and dance in clubs until three in the morning every weekend, inhaling lungfulls of smoke all night long. This was the equivalent of doing four hours of aerobics in a smoke-filled room. It doesn’t bear thinking about how utterly stupid that was. In addition, of course, one spent a fortune in dry-cleaning clothes to take away the sour, stale stench of it.

And then the big one. The unspeakable one. The unforgivable one. My father, a smoker since the age of 14, when he was persuaded along with all his friends that it was the cool, adult and elegant thing to do, left us all behind when he died of smoking-related heart disease at the ridiculous age of 54. He never saw his grandchildren.

He grew up in an age when hosts automatically offered their guests a cigarette, when every movie star had a signature way of lighting up, when not to smoke would have been regarded as peculiar and antisocial, and all the time the tobacco companies knew perfectly well what their product was doing to their customers and kept it quiet. He tried to stop many times and couldn’t, because even 20 years ago there was little or no practical help for nicotine addicts, and certainly no sympathy.

Next week won’t bring back my father, or my friend, or any of the hundreds of thousands of people who died painful, undignified, terrible deaths because filthy, greedy, corporate monsters worked hard at keeping the truth from their customers. What it might do is save the next generation from a similar fate. If the ban makes social smoking almost impossible for our children, if it makes the smoker into a pariah instead of a hero, then it will be one of the most significant pieces of legislation our government will ever make. This is not about smelly clothes, irritation and inconvenience. This is about life and death.

It’s impossible to articulate the rage that the bereaved feel when a death was preventable, and I challenge any of the reeking-breathed “campaigners” to meet me eye-to-eye and tell me how bloody aggrieved they are that they can’t smoke in a hotel foyer. Bring your own riot shield.

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