Ages-old tradition met head-on with public health this month in Britain's Parliament and, we are happy to say, the drive for clean air prevailed. A total smoking ban in public places was adopted for England, probably beginning next year.

The ban -- notable in a country where pubs became the cultural locus for lighting up while having a drink -- is more evidence that sensible anti-smoking laws are gaining because the vast majority of the people want them.

The action should encourage those Pennsylvanians who want stricter smoking bans that they are far from alone in demanding to exercise their right not to have tobacco smoke blown in their faces in public. Indeed, nonsmokers are part of a growing majority yearning to breathe free wherever they are, in the United States or around the world.

England joins Scotland and Northern Ireland, where smoking bans are to take effect in the next 13 months. Ireland outlawed public smoking in 2004.

On and around the European continent, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Malta have adopted smoking bans. As of Jan. 1, Spain restricted smoking in certain places, including the workplace and food stores, and France has a ban in offices and on public transportation.

Germany is a notable holdout but even there -- a nation where smoking kills a reported 110,000 to 140,000 people each year -- the government has been told that restaurants will voluntarily create nonsmoking areas by March 2008.

Here at home, smokers are now being required to pay a price for indulging in their deadly habit.

Aa number of major businesses are adding $25 to $50 a month to the cost of health insurance for employees who smoke. This is a long overdue measure which we have little doubt will become widespread. Nonsmokers should not have to, in effect, subsidize insurance costs for those who choose to endanger their health.

Those costs are enormous, and growing. The Centers for Disease Control estimates the direct health-care cost of smoking in the U.S. is $75 billion a year, plus $92 billion in lost wages annually when workers die prematurely from smoking.

Polls show that 70 percent of the public welcomes the new smoking ban in England, where the number of smokers has been cut in half in the past 30 years.

This is a convincing indication that even the hidebound British tradition of smoky pubs cannot compare with today's growing worldwide desire to be smoke-free.