Fagged out

London

Smoking will be illegal in most English and Welsh pubs within four years, the British government said this week. Only bars that don’t serve food, as well as some private clubs, will allow smoking. But anti-smoking activists said that those exceptions were too broad. “There is no excuse at all for the government to accept that secondhand smoke is a serious health and safety issue, and then to try to exempt some of the employees most at risk,” said activist Deborah Arnott. Scotland, which has its own, semiautonomous parliament, plans to bring in a tougher ban, making smoking illegal in all indoor public spaces by 2006.