[Intl-tobacco] Ireland's ban on lighting up is catching on

[Robert Weissman]

Ireland's ban on lighting up is catching on
International Herald Tribune
 July 9, 2004

 Elisabeth Rosenthal/IHT IHT

 DUBLIN It is a rainy lunch hour in the Temple Bar District, and there are
 two things missing from the once-bustling Ha'Penny Bridge Pub: smoke and
 people.

 Only a few customers nurse dark pints of Guinness Stout, a decades-old
 tradition. But Chris Flynn, a house painter, has added a new and tedious
 ritual to his pub lunch: After each beer, he zips up his jacket and moves
 pitifully outside into the drizzle to smoke a cigarette.

 It is a dance that is becoming more common in Europe, as other nations
 follow Ireland's lead with more stringent smoking restrictions.

 "All of us said it'll never happen here, since smoke and drink is Irish
 culture," lamented Flynn, a pack-a-day smoker. "You want to enjoy your paper
 and pint and a fag. But now you're exiled. It's terrible."

 Pub life is definitely not what it used to be since Ireland passed by far
 the strictest smoking ban in Europe on March 29 of this year. It prohibits
 smoking in workplaces, which includes buses, offices and (of course) pubs.
 In an unlikely instant, this smokers' paradise turned into a tightly
 monitored smoking desert. Ripples from the legislation are still percolating
 through Dublin and on to the Continent, where several governments are
 watching the Irish experiment as they fashion smoking bans of their own.

 "I think the tide is turning against smoking in many parts of Europe,
 although I don't think the countries in the South are quite ready for this
 yet," said the European Union's health commissioner, David Byrne, who has
 crusaded against the habit. "Now when I go to Italy or Spain, I find it
 intrusive, surprising, odd when I go into a smoke-filled restaurant. It
 looks strange to me, and that's good. Its time had come in Ireland and its
 time is coming in other member states."

 Depending on your perspective, the Irish experiment is either a
disaster or
 a triumph. Pub owners complain that business is down drastically, by as much
 as 50 percent, and almost all say they have had to lay off workers. Stag
 parties and wakes have moved from pubs to private homes, so that
patrons may
 smoke as they celebrate marriages or mourn the dead.

 All over Dublin, smokers huddle in doorways enjoying their forbidden fruit.
 But to almost everyone's surprise, the ban has taken effect without so much
 as, well, a cough or a gasp from many smokers themselves.

 In dozens of interviews, customers (including many smokers) say that they
 are enjoying the clean air at the pub and the office. Many smokers admit
 that going outside for a cigarette is "not that bad" - a view that may
 change once winter sets in.

 What's more, almost all said they had been smoking much less since the ban
 took effect. If the goal of the edict was to reduce exposure to tobacco and
 second-hand smoke, then it has certainly been a raging success.

 "Nobody wanted it, but you get used to it, and it does make you cut back,"
 said Serena McGiff, 24, as she smoked under an awning, during her lunch
 break. "I used to go to the pub and smoke nonstop, a pack a night. Now I
 only smoke a few a day."

 Since March, Norway and Malta have also instituted total smoking bans like
 Ireland's. Sweden's is scheduled to start next year. As of 2005, even
 hard-smoking Italy will have new legislation that dramatically restricts
 smoking in bars and restaurants, and is considering further
limitations. The
 European Union has now banned all cigarette advertising in the media, and
 requires that huge, menacing health warnings cover a third of each
pack. To
 limit smoking, governments across Europe have drastically raised taxes,
 increasing the price of cigarettes to over E5, or more than $6, in many
 places.

 In those vast swaths of Europe where smokers still reign supreme, reactions
 range from derision to panic. "Sure there may be antismoking laws and
it may
 be prohibited, but no one will pay attention to them here," said Mario Frao,
 smoking at the Taverna della Scala in Rome. "In Italy, it is always like
 this. And we love our cigarettes."

 Sophie Duhamel, a travel agent, smoking at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport
 said: "In France there will never be a total ban - there will always be at
 least two separate areas. It is our right."

 In fact, France already requires a division of bars and restaurants into
 smoking and nonsmoking zones, but smoking tables and nonsmoking tables are
 often only a puff of smoke away.

 Upscale restaurants in Lisbon provide smokers with covers for cigarette
 packs so they won't have those hostile health warnings disturbing their
 meal.

 In the United States, antismoking laws largely followed a dramatic drop in
 the levels of smoking and a shift in public opinion. But in Europe they are
 more often helping to creating a trend. In much of Europe, smoking levels
 remain high and attitudes toward smoking tolerant. According to a 2003
 survey commissioned by the European Commission, nearly 40 percent of
 European adults still smoked at the end of 2002. In the same survey the
 average European said they would only "rarely" ask a smoker to stop smoking.

 But this is perhaps the best measure of the rough road ahead: Although
 Byrne, the EU health commissioner, has for years pushed for strict bans
 across Europe, the building he works in at the European Council of Ministers
 banned smoking only as of May 1. Buildings belonging to the other two
 administration divisions of the European Union - the Parliament and European
 Commission - still permit smoking in private offices and designated areas.

 But surveys have shown that European attitudes are beginning to change -
 that smoking is regarded as less cool than it once was, with nonsmokers
 worrying more about the health effects. In Britain, where more than 40
 percent of adults smoke and where there are no legal restrictions on smoking
 in public places, a recent survey found that 80 percent of people said they
 favored a smoking ban in the workplace, though that number dropped to 50
 percent for a ban that included pubs.

 Some British tourists in Dublin were rapturous about pub air: "I say the
 sooner we have this in England, the better," said Ian Tantrum, having a beer
 in the famous - and now smoke-free - Temple Bar. "By and large I think
 people now accept this as inevitable."

 In Europe's smokier, more fractious South, a near-religious devotion to the
 right to smoke, as well as an innate aversion to government interventions,
 make smoking bans a very hard sell.

 "It won't happen - in Rome maybe they'll accept it, but never in Naples,
 where I'm from," said Guido Silvano, smoking at a pizzeria in Rome. When
 Italy passed mandatory seat belt laws a few years ago, Napolese
 entrepreneurs responded by selling shirts with fake seat belts
emblazoned on
 the front, to fool police and mock the law.

 But never is a long time. A few years ago, experts predicted that Romans
 would never comply with a law requiring helmets on motor scooters, but
 everyone wears them now. Pino Mannarino, owner of Osteria dell'ignegno, in
 Rome, said he did not think smoking regulations that are to take effect on
 Jan. 1 will affect his restaurant's business much. These laws require
 restaurants to create sealed-off smoking areas with separate ventilation
 systems, or to become smoke free entirely.

 "People have gotten used to not smoking on planes and trains, so they
can do
 without for a few hours," he said.

 Dr. Sylvio Gallus, a biostatistician in Milan, was distressed recently to
 find that smoking had actually risen among young Italians in the past year,
 to 33 percent in men and nearly 27 percent in women. On the bright
side, he
 said, survey respondents were minimizing the extent of their smoking.

 "Something is changing - 10 years ago it was so fashionable to smoke.
Now I
 think not so much. Maybe it will be considered out-of-date soon."

 In Ireland, "never" for smokers, has already arrived. And people are
 adapting. Paul Mullen, 31, a smoker and manager of O'Briens Pub - one of
 Dublin's largest - said that business was down some nights by 60
percent, at
 a low for the past 10 years.

 "This is ridiculous, he said. "This is how people socialize in Ireland. It's
 part of our culture to drink and have a fag."

 He said that he, like his customers, now tended to stay home to drink
in the
 evenings. At lunch, instead of sitting in pubs, people sit in parks.
 Corporate functions, which used to make up an important part of this huge
 pub's business, are no longer booking. "They won't come because they can't
 smoke," he said. An ancient cigarette-vending machine stands under a
 three-month-old sign: "It Is Illegal to Smoke in the Premises. Maximum Fine
 3000 Euro."

 In New York City, which enacted its own smoking ban several years ago,
 business at first fell off dramatically, but it has recovered at least
 partially since.