It's been illegal to smoke in areas where there is open food (such as a canteen servery or restaurant sweet trolley) since I worked in catering back in 1979/1980. The law was enforceable by the landlord.

Wetherspoons and many, many other pubs have had non-smoking areas for as long as they've served food. Bit stupid if you ask me, smoke is a free-moving entity that goes where it pleases, rather than keeping to the smoking end of the bar, and there were a huge number of pubs & restaurants where to get to the non-smoking bit, you had to walk through the smoking area! Many other pubs had a 'no smoking at the bar' rule that made life easier for non-smoking bar staff.

To extend the ban to the rest of the building just makes plain sense to me, when as statistics quoted above show, less than half the population are smokers. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Here's a suggestion. Get the smokers in the pubs affected to match the money they spend a month on tobacco products. Put that money into a fund and help buy the pubs their smoking shelters. That way, everyone is happy. I, as a non-smoker, am not subsidising the habit in others by an extra 5p on my beer, pub keeps both our custom, the smokers get their shelter and they might just realise how much money they physically burn each month!