THE other day I asked a friend who I had not seen for some time whether he still smoked.

"Yes," he said. Then a pregnant pause, followed by: "I'm waiting for you lot to ban smoking in public places. It's the only way I can see that I'm ever going to give up."

It got me thinking. Then my colleague, Health Secretary John Reid, made some interesting observations at one of the Labour Party's Big Conversation events.

He said that for a 21-year-old single mother living on a council estate smoking might be "their only enjoyment sometimes". He added that smoking was by no means the most serious problem faced by people in such situations "but it is an obsession of the learned middle class".

John used to be a 60-a-day man. He gave up completely 18 months ago but, unlike some, he has not adopted the passion (or evangelism) of the convert which you sometimes find.

What about me? I confess. I have smoked. I rather precociously began by smoking a pipe - though it seemed fashionable in those days, and the odd cigar. Then I had a period smoking cigarettes - not many I used to tell myself (but who doesn't?), but too many. Now I chew gum. But like most people who have ever smoked, I understand the immediate pleasure to be gained from nicotine, as well as the clear health risks. Years ago you were the exception if you didn't smoke. In the 80s I well recall a meeting of the Blackburn Labour Party in the old Trades' Club when the air was so thick with smoke it was choking, but the chair refused to ask people to put out their cigarettes (he had one in his hand as he spoke) because "a week's notice of such motions is required"!

On the underground in London, until the terrible Kings' Cross fire in 1987, every other carriage was for smokers; and often the air was so thick you could barely see or breathe.

When the railways, and then the airlines began to ban smoking on trains and planes I was sceptical. Would it work? Provided there were sufficient non-smoking areas, surely smokers should be permitted to light up?

However and to my surprise, these bans have worked. Interestingly, like the pal I re-met the other day, in my experience it's often hardened smokers as much as non-smokers who appear to like the bans. This reveals a truth that most smokers would like to give up, but need a hand to do so. Nicotine is, I am told, one of the most addictive substances known.

Along with trains and planes, most workplaces are non-smoking today. But there's one big difference between the current restrictions on smoking and what is now proposed by some. The restrictions to date have been brought in progressively, and in a voluntary way. Yes, there may be railway and airline by-laws which enforce the bans, but Parliament has passed no general law making it a criminal office to smoke in public places like pubs, or on the street. It's one thing, many might say, for a mood to build up gradually and to be turned, stage by stage, into a practice by choice on the ground; another for a ban to be imposed "from on high."