A smoker's guide to Europe and beyond (part one) de Joe Joackson

A smoker's guide to Europe and beyond (part one)

Monday April 7, 2008
Currently on tour, musician Joe Jackson reports from Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany
My current concert tour started with a month long trip around Europe, during which I was able to observe the progress of smoking bans in ten countries. There are big differences, but the situation in the UK is nevertheless unique on several counts.
I’ll get to that later, but first a couple of general points. First, to anyone who still believes that smoking bans are saving them from death by ‘secondhand smoke’, I’m tempted to say: for God’s sake, grow up. More politely: take a bit of time to actually look at the evidence. Even the most basic understanding of how the studies are done, what the statistics actually mean, etc, should convince you that whatever smoking bans are about, it isn’t ‘health’.
Second: many people assume that smoking bans are spreading just because a few people in authority have turned into nagging nannies. This is certainly a factor, as is excessive deference towards anyone who purports to speak in the name of ‘health’. But smoking bans are really much more about money and control. Politicians don’t care about true science, nor do they care about what people actually want. What they care about is allying themselves with the most powerful lobby groups; and the antismoking movement is currently a very powerful one indeed.
Closed doors
The current wave of smoking bans is not driven by public demand – the public has had no choice whatsoever (and anyway, if such demand really existed, draconian laws and penalties would not be needed). Smoking bans are the result of deals made behind closed doors between government health departments, EU bureaucrats, the astonishingly corrupt World Health Organisation, and the pharmaceutical industry (nicotine gum, anyone?). In other words, by people we didn’t even get to vote for.
Antismoking is to a great extent a racket. But this is detailed elsewhere, and I’ll get off my soapbox now and get on with the travelogue. Interestingly enough, the antismoking mafia have left some room for different countries to come up with their own versions of smoking bans, and there are many differences not only in the letter of the law but also in enforcement and compliance.
Dublin seemed to me just slightly more smoke-friendly than London, with quite a few places making smokers pretty comfortable. I can recommend Whelan’s and The Brazen Head as two pubs with outside smoking areas so sheltered and well-heated that they might as well have been inside (and this on a nasty late-February evening). On the other hand fines for smoking can go up to a staggering 3,000 euro, and the outside ash-receptacles are covered with antismoking propaganda brought to you by Pfizer.
Demonstrated
Our next stop was Paris. ‘Surely the French don’t want a smoking ban!’ you say. Well, they don’t. In fact 10,000 of them demonstrated in Paris against it, but you won’t have heard a word about that in the mainstream media. Now they have no choice but to make the best of it. Luckily, thousands of bars, cafes and restaurants are already equipped with that great French invention, the terasse, thousands of which have now been largely enclosed and equipped with heat lamps.
You might well roll your eyes at this, thinking of some of the rather sad token efforts made by English pubs. But these heat lamps actually create heat – lots of it – with extra-wide reflectors on top to spread it around. Not only that, but many of them look positively elegant, attached to walls with ornate ironwork, reminiscent of antique gas lamps. Many cafes are now packed outside and empty inside.
In Belgium the government actually did what the UK government promised in its election manifesto to do, but didn’t (ie they banned smoking in restaurants but not in bars). The restaurant trade is suffering but there are still loads of places to drink and smoke, and Brussels, a city I never liked much, has gone up in my estimation.
Tragedy
There’s still smoking everywhere in Amsterdam. Unfortunately, though, this is the scene of a tragedy about to unfold. Another thing you won’t have known from the mainstream media is that, in 2005, the Dutch government was the first to actually study the evidence on ‘secondhand smoke’, commission a large study on ventilation, and conclude that a ban was not justified. Instead, bars and restaurants were given until 2009 to upgrade their ventilation and introduce more no smoking areas.
This triumph of common sense drove the antismoking brigade mad with rage, and they’ve been leaning hard on the Netherlands ever since. Now a new government, with a gung-ho health minister, has decided to scrap the law and ban smoking in the summer of 2008. I hasten to add that separate smoking rooms will still be allowed where possible, but for a place as free and tolerant as Amsterdam it’s still a depressing result.
I know what you’re thinking: what about the infamous ‘coffee shops’ where you can freely smoke cannabis (generally mixed with tobacco). Well, the new health minister has proposed an answer: close them down too! This has completely befuddled the politically-correct Left since they tend to subscribe to the fashionable fallacy that while one sort of leaf is harmless and kind of cool, another sort is the devil incarnate.
Confusing
The situation in Germany is even more confusing. There has never been much enthusiasm for a ban in this very smoke-friendly country, and the federal government passed the buck to the individual Lander (or States), all of whom have come up with their own laws. Most of them are allowing separate rooms; others have left loopholes so obvious that they can only be deliberate. (In Bavaria, for instance, hundreds of bars have simply declared themselves private clubs and carried on smoking.)
Across the country, bars are defying bans and many city and state officials, who never wanted them, are vowing not to enforce them. The situation is volatile. The authorities clearly want to please the EU and the WHO, but are nervous about acting like the last guy who tried to stamp out smoking in Germany – a certain Mr Hitler.
Even the legal situation could be worse. In response to a request about legal smoking rooms in Hamburg, my contacts at Netzwerk Rauchen (the German smokers’ ‘Resistance’) sent me an ‘incomplete list’ (it’s early days yet) of over 100 places – and I spotted three more during a pre-show stroll.
Consternation
Still, it’s rough on places too small to create a separate room. The Kneipen – small corner pubs which are very much a part of the culture of Berlin – are also places where the owners, the bartenders, and most of the customers smoke, and they are in a state of consternation, faced with the choice of breaking the law or going out of business.
One last point about the German situation: even in places where smoking is banned, you don’t see many ‘No Smoking’ signs. While in England they scream at you from every available wall, door and window, some bars in Berlin have simply removed the ashtrays. If any British antismoker is reading this, I can assure you, as a smoker, that when all the ashtrays disappear from a favourite bar it sends a chill down my spine. In other words it’s more than enough for me, but not nearly enough, apparently, for you.
Joe Jackson is a writer and musician. Part two of Joe’s Smoker’s Guide to Europe and Beyond will be published on Wednesday.
Link
http://www.joejackson.com

A smoker's guide to Europe - and beyond (part two)
Tuesday April 8, 2008
Joe Jackson concludes his smoker’s guide, reporting from Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Israel


I hadn’t been to Italy since it became the second country, after Ireland, to ban smoking, and I was prepared for the worst. But within an hour of arriving in Milan, I saw several people smoking in the supposedly strictly smoke-free Central Station, and was almost run over by a bus driver with a fag hanging out of his mouth. Apparently you can bend the rules a bit, but not defy the law completely, since it’s enforced by the usual steep fines, threat of closure, encouragement to report illicit smoking to the authorities, etc etc.
The good news is that, like other southern European countries, Italy has an established outdoor eating and drinking culture. So now, with the addition of more shelter and heaters, it has an outdoor smoking culture too, and for most of the year it’s very pleasant. In Milan even the cafes in the famous Galleria all allow smoking, and this is a building which, though it’s technically open to the elements, would certainly be nonsmoking in England. Too comfortable, you see. Oh, and by the way: since the smoking ban, sales of cigarettes in Italy have gone up.
Paradise
The Alpine countries were the most smoke-friendly places on our trip. Switzerland has no smoking restrictions, except some voluntary ones here and there which are chosen according to the free market (imagine that)! The Zurich airport has half a dozen smoking lounges with shocking signs: SMOKERS WELCOME! Of course the antis are trying it on in Switzerland too – they’re trying everywhere. Perhaps Switzerland’s unique political status (not an EU member and with a decentralised system of its own) is at least slowing them down.
Austria is still a smoker’s paradise. In Vienna – one of the world’s most beautiful and civilised cities – you can smoke everywhere, and there are wonderfully inviting tobacconists on practically every corner, too. We went to a lively pub/restaurant which brewed its own excellent beer, and although more than half the customers were smoking (cigars and pipes, too) the ventilation was good enough that the air wasn’t smoky at all. My bassist, who doesn’t like smoke, was amazed, but I can hardly blame him. One of the many facts persistently buried by the antis is that it really isn’t difficult, with existing technology, to make tobacco smoke in the air barely noticeable.
Antismokers don’t talk much about Austria, since, like Greece and Japan, it’s a very heavy-smoking nation which is also very healthy and long-lived. It’s also a nation where antismoking hysteria isn’t really catching on. That doesn’t mean a smoking ban can’t happen, however. Ultimately, Austrian citizens, and even elected politicians, may well have no more choice in the matter than the Irish or Italians.
Hilarious
As a sort of postscript to Europe, this first leg of our tour finished up with our first visit to Israel. I remembered that a friend of mine had gone to Tel Aviv a couple of years ago and declared it to be so smoker-friendly that when he went to a gym to work out, there was an ashtray next to the exercise bike. Degenerates that we are, we found this hilarious.
Imagine my surprise on finding that Israel has had a smoking ban for a few months now. It seems to have caused more confusion than in any other country, though. For instance, one journalist told me that it’s barely enforced at all. You go into a bar, ask if it’s OK to smoke, and nine times out of ten you’re presented with an ashtray. But according to our concert promoter’s representative, the law is strictly enforced.
Banned
On our first night in Tel Aviv we played safe by drinking and smoking at an open-air bar on the beach. The many bars lining the waterfront all seemed to have banned smoking inside – though I saw people smoking inside anyway.
After the second of our two shows, we were told by one local contact that she couldn’t find us anywhere to smoke, since it’s strictly forbidden; and by another, that it was no problem at all. We decided to follow the second contact and she did indeed lead us straight to a nice bar where everyone was smoking with gusto. We had a great time, but I left Israel with a disturbing thought nagging at me.
The thought was this: antismokers operate by spreading fear and intolerance. Sure, some of them are well-intentioned or simply ignorant. But the real engines driving their movement are utterly cynical. The whole thing would fall apart if it were subjected to any real scrutiny by politicians and media. But in the meantime its very existence depends upon outrageous fearmongering, and on promoting intolerance towards smokers. And if there’s one country which doesn’t need any more fear or intolerance, it’s Israel. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Reasonable
We didn’t make it, on this trip, to the one European country that has actually come up with a reasonable and popular compromise: Spain. The Spanish ‘ban’ merely obliges places over a certain size to have separate smoking rooms, and lets smaller places decide for themselves. We did, though, spend some time in Spain’s polar opposite: the country where our tour started, a country which has, in a remarkably short space of time, become the worst place in the world to be a smoker.
It’s a country whose ban has absolutely no exceptions or exemptions, where outside smoking is mostly uncomfortable or impossible, where antismoking propaganda does not let up for a minute and where ugly signage blares at you from every angle. A country where antismokers are so arrogant and empowered that restrictions are proliferating in outside areas and even starting to reach into peoples’ homes, and where, if you admit to being a smoker, you can lose your job or be refused medical treatment.
Spiteful
In short, there is one country which has taken the antismoking mandates of the big health lobbies and drug companies and interpreted and implemented them in the most severe and spiteful ways it can possibly come up with. That country is the UK.
Outside smoking shelters in the UK are forbidden by law to be more than 50 percent enclosed. As the campaigning group Freedom2Choose has pointed out: a farmer who keeps pigs is obliged by law to provide them with 95 percent shelter. So the 12 million or more tax-paying British citizens who smoke are officially, legally, worse than pigs.
Why should this be so? If anyone has any answers beyond a general ‘this country’s going to the dogs’ malaise, I’d be interested to hear them. Meanwhile I’m off to the world’s second-most antismoking country, the USA, which at least has a few exempted cigar bars and other loopholes. Wish me luck.
Joe Jackson is a writer and musician. He is currently touring the United States and will also play concerts in Canada, Australia and South Africa before returning to Britain in June for concerts in Wolverhampton, Manchester and London.
Link
http://www.joejackson.com