Vince Sibbald still remembers the haze that hung over the bar in the days before smoking was banned.
It was 20 years in December since the Smoke-free Environments Amendment Act became law, and the Motueka Golden Bay Guardian chatted to several Top of the South publicans about their memories of that time.
Vince has owned Hotel Motueka since 2017, but 20 years ago, he and his wife lived in Christchurch, with four bars in their ownership.
Vince vividly remembers the day of the law change, as it coincided with his wife’s birthday on 9 December, 2004. They held a big party at one of their pubs, with the ban coming into law at midnight.
There was a concern that, when the clocks ticked over, the police would come barging through the doors to enforce the change, but he says that midnight came and went without any drama.
Vince says that even in the weeks that followed, local police did not come in heavy-handed, and in fact took more of an educational standpoint to help people transition to the new smoke-free norm.
People were not hurrying to extinguish their ciggies, however, both that night and in the days that followed. Vince remembers there being “a lot of push-back in all pubs”, with smokers feeling increasingly displaced after the habit had been banned from other spaces, such as aeroplanes and movie theatres.
“People just through it was their last God-given sanctuary where they could smoke.”
“It didn’t take long to become the norm,” Vince remembers.
“I had the odd person who’d forget and light up, and everyone would just look at them in shock, and then they’d scurry outside,” he says.
David “Tinky” Hovenden ran the Collingwood Tavern for 43 years, and he says that at the time, he was convinced the law would be “the end of pubs”.
It was a common fear amongst other members of the Hotel Association, he says.
“I thought, this is going to kill us.”
Now, however, he reckons it was “the best thing they ever did”. Business dropped away for a time, but it came back within months, and although some people dug in their heels or absent-mindedly sparked up when muscle memory took over, the patrons adapted.
Vince and Tinky both mention that the building maintenance is much easier now.
“We’re no longer scraping tar off the ceilings, and repainting our ceilings every six months,” Vince says.
There is also far less replacement required for the hotel’s curtains, blinds and bedding.
The publicans all agree that the law-change allows a wider clientele to visit their bars.
Tinky says that people still have areas they can smoke, and pubs have become much more family friendly as a result of the law change.
Renae Swan laughs as she recalls that when she took over the business from Tinky six years ago, the tables still had holes in them where the ashtrays used to sit.
Getting rid of those relics was one of the first things they did, she says.
She was on the other side of the bar when the law was first brought in and remembers coming home from nights out “smelling like an ashtray”.
“We’re a family friendly environment, so the last thing we want is everyone to be smoking up a storm in there.”
For each of the publicans, it was a little surreal to think about how much had changed since 2004. “I’d look down the bar and it was just a blasted haze,” Tinky laughs. “It was a bloody smokescreen.”
