Toytown Germany

Smoking in bars and restaurants has recently been banned in Ireland, Italy, Norway, and Cuba. Scotland will be following suit in 2006. No such laws exist in Munich. Yet. But a new campaign is being launched here on Friday. The Bel Air project's aim is not to persecute smokers, but to protect non-smokers from being forced to breathe secondhand fumes. Mayor Christian Ude's wife, Edith von Welser-Ude, has been asked to serve as official patron for the organization. With a bit of luck Munich law will soon be brought into line with modern public opinion. As can be seen from TT's list, there are currently far too few non-smoking restaurants in the city.

[img]http://www.toytowngermany.com/munich/non-smoking_munich.jpg[/img]

The Bel Air Project is hosted at:
www.belair-muenchen.de

For info on smoking bans worldwide see:smokefreeworld.comBBC News: Worldwide smoking bans

Thanks to Klaus Eck for the alert on this.

It's not the ban, it's the enforcement.
Smoking's been Verboten at all S-bahn stations since January - do the smokers give a toss?

New Zealand has also banned smoking in all bars and restaurants.

Surely there is no demand. Otherwise, for purely business and profit reasons, restaurants and bars would change without being forced to do so. Market forces rule.

My thoughts exactly. If there is a demand the markets will react and satisfy it. Obviously the demand isn't high enough, otherwise there would be shitloads of non-smoking restaurants opening all over the place.

> Munich law will soon be brought into line with
> modern public opinion.

Correct. And Modern Public Opinion says:
if you can't stand the smoke, don't go there.

It's coming in Stockholm too as soon as the weather gets a bit better. They can sometimes be considerate like that.

No objections from me at all. In fact I'm in favour of it, so long as I don't have to listen to the sanctimonious neverending waffle which regularly eminates from many of the anti-smoking lobby. The smokers fumes may damage your lungs but having to listen to some of the ranting that goes on can surely induce brain damage.

Er, Mr. "Public Opinion", on what basis do you make your assertions? Have you conducted a survey of public opinion?

Cos we have. And the results are clear.

I find a certain group in the public smoking debate odd... it's the "government must increase taxes and take care of us/protect us" in many social issues, but then when it comes down to public smoking and health it becomes a personal rights issue... it sounds more like "I want the government to force people to do x,y,z as long as it's not my rights they're interfering with"

The problem is, German non-smokers are way too tolerant and don't seem to feel they have the right to breath fresh air. There are MANY social smokers too who only smoke at bars and when they drink because others around them are doing it.

I'm sorry, but a fitness studio having a bar with chain smokers huddled around it? You have to walk through it all to get to the gym or squash courts. That is just sick and wrong...people need to stand up and say NO...the only reason it all worked in USA is because the health insurance comps. sued the ciggy comps...why doesn't AOK do the same???

Right on man,
Smokers always seem to be complaining about whinging non-smokers! What they don't realise is that they STINK. To me the smell is much more important than the health aspects. Although seeing parents smoking in front of there toddlers is scary.

I can't wait until the battery powered cig comes along...

www.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/02/1820221

People have a choice where they eat and drink. If they wanted non-smoking restaurants then they would frequent them, then more of them would open. The people who have no choice and are most vulnerable are children whose parents smoke at home. If the law changes at all, it should be to protect them by making it an offence to smoke at home if you have children.

Seven non-smoking restaurants / bars (count 'em) in a city of over 6,000 licensed establishments is not something I'd call "having a choice".

First off, I am not a smoker, in fact, I have allergy problems, when I am in a smoke filled room for too long. With that said, I don’t really think that a ban is the best way to go. They should however require a ventilation system to be installed that removes the smoke and filters in fresh air. Another step would be to make parts of the restaurant/pub where that is not possible smoke-free. It would be much easier and less expensive to help the restaurants pay for the ventilation than it would be to try and enforce a law banning smoking all together. A law requiring ventilation may also be easier to push through. Everyone would benefit from it from the restaurant employees to the patrons, and in the end it will be worth it for the owners as well: the employees will be more healthy, and the food will taste better so more people may come...
it maybe a draw back for a few restaurants though, that is if you can actually taste the food and it tastes like poison! :-)

"Seven non-smoking restaurants / bars (count 'em) in a city of over 6,000 licensed establishments is not something I'd call "having a choice"."

As has been said over and over, if there is such a demand from 'the people' for non-smoking restaurants and whatnot then why have such places not opened? There are enough enterprising people out there that if they saw a demand they would go for it. That said, where are you getting the figure of 7 non-smoking premises from?

1. Governments spend too much time butting in on our lives already. I want small government, not a babysitter.

2. There is a cultural difference. If germans really wanted to ban smoking, then it would be a bigger issue. It only shows up here because we have so many expats from big-brother lands.

3. You have to die of something. I just cannot understand the desire to live forever. There is an old saying - "If you don't drink, smoke or cheat you'll live 10 years more - but what for?".

"The Bel Air project's aim is not to persecute smokers, but to protect non-smokers from being forced to breathe secondhand fumes"

That's a lie. If the issue here was the health of non-smokers, what about the negative health effects of the alcohol they drink in their smoke-free bars or the fatty Bavarian food that clogs up their arteries in their smoke-free restaurants? The latter two surely have as much an effect on the health of these delicate flowers as passive smoke (despite the BMA's repeated attempts to re-classify passive smoke as the equivalent of inhaling cyanide while drinking strychnine).

Ban smoking - but also ban alcohol and unhealthy food in that case.

Oh please...eating and drinking is a CHOICE! Inhaling smoke is NOT!

"Oh please...eating and drinking is a CHOICE! Inhaling smoke is NOT!"

1) If you CHOOSE to eat and drink unhealthily, don't whine about passive smoke.

2) Inhaling smoke in a bar IS a CHOICE in the same way that I choose not get run over by cars by not stepping out in front of moving ones. Can't hack the smoke in a boozer? Don't go!

Consumer demand will bring change?

If I am a restaurant owner and I can cater to two sets of people (smokers and non-smokers) then I stand a better chance of having a full restaurant. Why would I choose to alienate half (or in Germany more than half) of my clientele? This argument of if you can't stand the smoke go somewhere else is complete BS as it implies that I should change where I might want to eat or drink because of the voluntary actions of others which are proven to be unhealthy to me.

I was recently in Rome where the smoking ban is in place and visited my restaurants and bars and I didn't see any difference in who many customers each place had only that at the end of the night my clothes didn't smell like smoke!

This whole argument by the smoking group assumes that because something was alright in the past (public smoking) it should be alright in the future. When was the last time you smoked on an airplane?

The worst thing for me about this whole smoking problem that the Germans have is in a sushi restaurant you might be sharing a table with two other people and just as your nice fresh sushi comes to the table the bastards next you decide it is time to smoke. What happened to common courtesy and etiquette?

@ Ted Maul
"Ban smoking - but also ban alcohol and unhealthy food in that case."

Are you really that sad of a person to not understand the difference between what I decide to put in my body (alcohol and food) and what smoking actions of others ar putting into my body.

And who said anything about bars, it also happens in healthy locations as earlier pointed out in such as gyms, sushi restaurants, coffee shops, etc.

In Dallas they came up with a law that seperated restaurants and bars by putting a ban in place unless your estabishment derived 75 percent or more of revenue from alcohol sales