Anti-tobacco Laws Make Smoking Germans Defiant
on July 6th, 2008 at 11:41 pmWhile the Italians and French are respecting public smoking bans, anti-tobacco laws in Germany are seeing defiant Germans calling off their New Year’s ‘no-nicotine’ resolutions to begin smoking with a vengeance.
A ban has been in force in most of the normally order-loving nation since January 1, the day cafes in France put away the ashtrays after more than a century of tobacco-stained bonhomie and smokers decamped to the pavement.
That evening former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt was photographed lighting up at a Hamburg theatre and five months later the air has still not cleared.
Bars in Berlin have been granted a reprieve, restaurants in Bavaria have found a loophole by converting to private clubs and the state’s famed Oktoberfest will for now remain a smoking zone.
That decision was taken by Bavarian premier Guenther Beckstein, who is due to fight state elections during the world’s biggest beer festival this year and openly worries that the ban will cost his conservatives votes.
In three other German states courts have watered down the new tobacco laws, ruling that in smaller pubs sparking up is legal again.
“The smoking ban is a failure,” said Siggi Ermer, the chairman of the country’s biggest anti-tobacco lobby, Pro Rauchfrei.
“It has not worked in the same way that it has in Italy, France or Britain. The difference is that there in each case you have a clear law that has put in place an absolute ban.