Slipping out for a cigarette has its benefits

The proportion of American adults who smoke has fallen from 42 per cent to under 20 per cent over the past 50 years, the American Journal of Public Health said in July. This suggested, the journal wrote, that the US was halfway through a 100-year war on cigarettes. Now, Thomas Farley , New York's city health commissioner, has resolved to fight on the beaches.
Mr Farley wants to end smoking on beaches and in parks, to add to the city's ban on cigarettes in bars, restaurants and workplaces.
As someone whose sole teenage cigarette made him feel sick, I welcomed the Financial Times' decision, over 20 years ago, to set up smokers' rooms and ban smoking at desks. The UK's ban on smoking in all enclosed public spaces in 2007 was even better, because it meant no more cigarette fumes wafting over restaurant food.
But it also meant the closure of the smoking rooms, and my colleagues having to hang around outside. The weather has been balmy, but winter will see them puffing desperately, shoulders hunched, so that they can rush in from the cold.
Separating cigarette smoke from the rest of us was justified. The dangers of second-hand smoke are well established. In 2005, before the smoking ban, the British Medical Journal said that inhaling other people's smoke in the workplace was probably responsible for the deaths of at least two people every working day.
But the hazard is greatly dissipated outside, and any remaining danger is surely preferable to hounding law-abiding people off the streets - or beaches and parks.
It is annoying to find cigarette butts buried in the sand or discarded around park benches, but nonsmokers leave more rubbish behind. Most smokers have now internalised society's disapproval of them. It was not long ago that visitors would ask for permission to light up in your home, or request an ashtray. Few would dream of doing so now. Smokers today are more courteous than mobile phone owners, burger munchers, headphone wearers or cyclists.
It is time to consider what, apart from killing two people a day, smokers have contributed to our workplaces. They form a particular subculture. Forced into each other's company they seem a more congenial bunch than most people at work.
Little research has been done on smoking in the workplace. Much of what there is focuses on how smoking bans encourage people to quit, or how non-smokers resent smokers leaving their desks for a puff (surely less of a legitimate gripe when so many people waste time surfing the internet without leaving their desks).
But I have not been able to track down any research on one of the most striking aspects of workplace smoking groups: their heterogeneous make-up. Companies spend money on activities such as Outward Bound adventures and cookery classes, hoping to encourage bonding between different departments. Smokers already cross those boundaries. Look at any group congregating for a cigarette: you will see senior executives and security guards, marketing and IT support.
Does smoking produce business benefits? "There's no doubt in my mind that it inspires cross-departmental collaboration," one FT commercial manager (and smoker) told me. "You get to know people who you otherwise wouldn't, and get a feel for what they do. If you've half a spark of creativity about you you'll doubtless stumble across an idea you hadn't thought of before. It also allows for the 'off the record' conversations between departments that grease the wheels of business. I'd be pretty lost without them."
Some FT smokers felt that spirit was lost when the smokers were forced outside. "There was an enforced intimacy about the smokers' room (and an enforced sense of solidarity in breathing each other's foul fumes) that is only replicated outside when there is a gentle drizzle, and everyone has to huddle close to the walls. But you do still get cross-departmental chatting," a smoker said.
One colleague recalled a previous job where the smokers were always the best source of gossip. "People (and not only former smokers or those trying to give up) used to announce: 'I'm just going off for a passive' - to sit in the smoking room and find out all the good stuff."
I never went into the smoking room. The stained ceiling gave you an idea of what cigarettes did to your lungs. But I probably missed out on the odd work tip as a result.