[Intl-tobacco] Some European countries are adopting American-style bans on smoking in bars

[Robert Weissman]

Smoke Signals - TIME magazine
 Some European countries are adopting American-style bans on smoking in bars

 Week of October 27, 2003 Edition

 Julie Rawe


 Like Big Macs, spandex and David Hasselhoff, nonsmoking sections in
Europe are still regarded as somewhat boorish American cultural
invasions. But in a grudging acknowledgment of the trend toward cleaner
air and cleaner lungs, Parisian power-lunch restaurant Le Pichet has
posted a sign stating NONSMOKERS TOLERATED. And by "tolerated," the
proprietors of this beautiful-people bistro mean, Don't complain if
smoke from the back room enshrouds your table or if the waiter flicks
ashes on anyone who orders a Coke with ice.

 Yes, dear tourists, as sure as Zagat's latest guide to Paris highlights
hundreds of restaurants with nonsmoking sections, however ineffective
they may be, the winds of (policy) change are threatening to blow more
European smokers into separate rooms and even, in some countries, out
the door. Although the Netherlands recently backpedaled on a planned ban
on smoking in bars and restaurants, Norway's will take effect next
spring. But the first European country to prohibit puffing in pubs will
be Ireland, which is scheduled to ring in the New Year with a ban on
smoking in all workplaces. But don't expect publicans to go gently into
that good night.

 "It smacks of dictatorship," says Glenn McLoughlin, manager of
Limerick's White House, who has threatened to shutter the
 historic tavern on Jan. 1 because of the predicted loss in revenue. The
controversial ban has been denounced not just by pub owners in County
Kerry, who have vowed to ignore the new rule, but also by Ireland's own
Environmental Minister - who, incidentally, smokes two packs a day.

 Europe's grog shops may be underestimating the appeal of smokeless
bars. Similar sky-is-falling predictions were made in
 California five years ago and in New York City last spring, but neither
tourism nor bar business has dried up yet because of smoking bans. "The
tide is turning," says David Byrne, European Commissioner for Health and
Consumer Protection, who championed the E.U.'s banning of tobacco ads in
print as well as on the radio and Internet, and has helped change Old
World attitudes by attaching brusque warnings to cigarette packs like
"Smoking can cause a slow and painful death." In France, where critics
have made much of the widely flouted 1992 law requiring adequate
ventilation of nonsmoking sections, the percentage of adults who smoke
has dropped from 45% to 32% in the past decade. Europe as a whole has
experienced a similar decline.

 Not all of the recent smoking prohibitions have been prompted by health
concerns. In Germany, the government began confining smokers in 64 of
its busiest train stations to small areas at the far end of the
platforms - not out of health concerns but over the $50 million it was
spending each year picking butts off the tracks. Likewise, one of the
Rhineland's top cabaret theaters started offering smoke-free
entertainment largely because patrons of Bonn's Springmaus complained
that coats hung in the foyer reeked of tobacco by the end of a show.
"Now smokers have to smoke outside, no matter what the weather is like,"
says manager Andreas Etienne. Except, of course, on the four nights a
week when smoking is still permitted.

 Alongside Germany's rather schizoid approach to tobacco control, Italy
is mandating not just better but bigger nonsmoking sections with a new
law decreeing that they account for a majority of the seating. At
present, to get a nonsmoking table in Rome's trendy Antico Arco, for
example, reservations need to be made a week in advance. Meanwhile, in
Norway, nonsmokers will have to wait for warmer weather to usher in
cigarette-free nightlife - the government pushed back the original
starting date of its smoking ban from Jan. 1 to next spring, to give
smokers one last winter before they start freezing their butts off.

 - With reporting by Bruce Crumley/Paris, Helen Gibson/London, Jeff
Israely/Rome and Ursula Sautter/Bonn