[Intl-tobacco] In Italy, smoking curbs face an uphill battle (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

In Italy, smoking curbs face an uphill battle
by Jeff Israely / Globe Correspondent
Source: The Boston Globe, Wednesday, 7/19/00

ROME - A visitor to Italy gets a taste for the country's attitude toward
its antismoking laws about eight minutes after the plane touches the
ground.

The first cigarette on home soil for Italian smokers is often lit directly
under the ''No Smoking'' signs posted by the airport's baggage claim area.

Though smoking has been banned in airports for 25 years, smokers,
including airline employees, janitors, and even policemen, have kept
lighting up.

Another law in 1996, aimed to protect workers throughout Italy from
secondhand smoke, has also done little to stop smoking in banks, offices
and factories.

Italy's new health minister, Umberto Veronesi, has decided to get serious
about the battle to break the habit in a country where smokers make up 36
percent of the adult population. He has introduced a proposal that would
not only extend and strengthen the ban on lighting up in public places but
would make Italy the first country after the United States to sue tobacco
producers for health-related damages caused by cigarettes.

There is, however, one big problem with plan B: The government produces
one-third of all cigarettes consumed here, and is the sole legal
distributor of tobacco products nationwide.

The Finance Ministry takes in some $8 billion each year from the sale of
cigarettes and other tobacco products.

''The cancer of the cigarettes is the cancer of the state,'' said Giuliano
Bianucci, president of the Italian Polite Smokers' Association. ''It will
be fun watching the government try to file a lawsuit against itself.''

Veronesi, who admits that taking the tobacco companies to court could turn
into a ''vicious circle'' for the Italian government, is nevertheless
convinced that such measures are needed to raise awareness of the dangers
of smoking, and eventually squeeze citizens into quitting.

The proposed amendment to the existing smoking ban would extend the
prohibition to bars and restaurants and would raise fines for illicit
smoking from as little as $2 to as much as $150. But the real revolution
would be that business owners would be held responsible for smoking on
their premises, with fines reaching $3,000.

''Smoking doubles an individual's risk of lung cancer, so this kind of law
was inevitable,'' the health minister, himself a cancer researcher, said
last week as he introduced the proposal that is expected to go before the
Legislature this fall. ''We don't want to marginalize smokers, but we want
to make it clear that they can't smoke in the presence of others.''

Caterina Levantesi, whose mother spent years trying to quit smoking, has
never had a cigarette. Still the 31-year-old microbiologist said she finds
the idea of a smoking ban in restaurants far-fetched.

''Sure, personally, it would suit me fine,'' said Levantesi. ''But I'm
always out with people who smoke, so I don't know what would happen. I
don't like the idea of `ghettoizing' smokers.''

The Rome native said she has her own way of monitoring the acceptability
of the smoking going on around her. ''Usually I'll just do this,'' she
said, waving her hand back and forth in front of her face.

''And then they understand and will turn away.''

For other nonsmokers, the effects of cigarettes in public places is not a
casual matter. Gemma Luzzi quit smoking 20 years ago when she began
suffering from asthma. Her grown children and friends still smoke in front
of her.

''Sure if it works, this law it would be the right thing,'' she said.
''But this is one of those things where they make a lot of noise and then
it isn't respected.''

Stefano Aliotta, who smokes a pack-and-a-half of Diana brand cigarettes a
day, said he looks to respect the existing laws as much as possible,
refraining from lighting up in airports and the office if there are
nonsmokers present.

Though he doesn't think of quitting, Aliotta, who works for a Naples-based
humanitarian organization, admits that he was shocked on a recent trip to
Kosovo to see 10- and 11-year-olds smoking.

In Italy, smoking bans - like traffic laws, parking restrictions, and the
seatbelt requirement, - are seen largely as the ''little prohibitions''
that are brushed off as quickly as they are instituted.

Still Bianucci, whose smoking association of 208,000 members includes
15,000 nonsmokers, said the health minister is trying to attack an Italian
problem with American solutions.

''It's an issue of culture,'' said Bianucci. ''Prohibition doesn't tend to
work in Italy. We are by nature a very tolerant society.''