Ireland’s ban on smoking in buildings other than private homes has been in place for a few weeks now, and appears to be holding. Wandering around Cork and Dublin over the past week, hotels, cafes, shops, and of course bars are all smoke-free. According to the OECD, 27 percent of Irish adults smoked every day in 1998 (down from 34 percent in 1985), which puts Ireland in the middle of the distribution internationally. There seem to have been two main effects so far. First, there are a lot of jokes and complaints about the effects of the ban. For instance, you can tell what those around you really smell like, which has come as a nasty shock to some people. The same goes for bar food. Second, all the smokers have been driven out on the street. You must now run a puffing gauntlet outside of hotels, restaurants and bars. It would be worth checking to see whether there isn’t one of those perverse little public goods effects here, people are now much more likely to encounter a faceful of smoke in true public spaces like footpaths, parks and the like than before.

Economists and sociologists tend to look a bit too hard for ironies of this sort, so maybe I’m overreaching. I still think that the best solution to the problem of smoking as it’s usually defined is the one found in many U.S. airports: a special, glass-walled smoking lounge with seats bolted to the floor, where smokers can go to light up and everyone going by can glance in through the haze at the yellowed wallpaper, the dirty floor and the unhappy looks of the addicts staring off into space, not talking to one another, trying to convince themselves that cigarettes really are sublime.