Posted on 01/17/2008 10:13:08 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Germans puff on as smoking ban fizzles
By Sarah Roberts
Tue Jan 15, 8:39 PM ET
Photographer Frank Blum puffed contentedly on a hand-rolled cigarette in a cafe in central Berlin, blatantly ignoring a ban that went into effect in most of Germany this month.
"I'm smoking because no one's stopping me," Blum, 43, said from behind his laptop, one of a dozen customers happily smoking without fear. "The cafes aren't making it difficult."
Blum is just one of many disobeying a law banning smoking in public places -- cafes, bars, restaurants and night clubs -- in force in Berlin and 11 other German states from January 1.
"My friends and I only go to places that let us smoke," said Lena Reuster, a 24-year-old economics student surrounded by a cloud of her own smoke. "When we go out we want our beer and cigarettes. It doesn't really matter until July."
The changes left only four of Germany's 16 states -- Saxony, Rheinland-Palatinate, Saarland and Thuringia -- with no ban. However, they plan to become smoke-free by July.
In the city-state of Berlin, the non-smoking bill issued by the Department of Health and Consumer Protection made police and proprietors responsible for enforcing the ban. They face fines up to 1,000 euros ($1,500) for violations.
Anyone now lighting up inside a public place is, in theory, risking a 100-euro fine, even though Berlin decided not to collect any fines until after a six-month transition period.
Berlin police have not responded to complaints about renegade smokers and are by and large letting cafe and bar owners decide whether customers can smoke or not.
"The smoking ban has taken effect but, during the transition period, it is not considered important," said Berlin police spokeswoman Birit Koenigsmann. "We're not sure what will happen from July but right now it's not a top priority."
TWO BLACK EYES
Newspapers are full of stories from both sides of the ashtray.
The mass-circulation newspaper Bild reported that Gerhard Gruenberg, a Berlin pub owner, received two black eyes from an angry customer who rejected his request to smoke outside.
Some smokers in the town of Frankfurt on Oder on Germany's eastern border, who face the state of Brandenburg's even stricter regulations on smoking, have been crossing the border into Poland to puff in bars where there is no ban.
In Czech Republic border towns, tobacco addicts from Bavaria and Saxony have been filling the smoke-filled taverns, according to news reports in both countries.
One smoker in Hesse, where the ban took effect in October, caused a stir by selling t-shirts bearing a yellow Star of David and the word "smoker" in the centre, comparing the treatment of smokers to that of Jews under the Nazis.
"It's brainless and tasteless for smokers to use the Holocaust in such a primitive fashion," said Dieter Graumann, deputy president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
At the St. Oberholz cafe in Berlin where Blum and others were merrily puffing away the air was full of stale smoke. Manager Gerard Janssen, 40, said there was no point in following the rules if no one else was.
"We banned smoking for the first week of January but when we realized other cafes in the area were still allowing it, we did too," he said. "We decided to give our patrons the opportunity to smoke again."
As it should be. Owners and customers should decide, not the nanny government.
Mike Huckabee will be bringing the smoking ban to a city near you.
(not that the collapse of the Soviet Empire is a bad thing)
FMCDH
Hillary cups? Well, cigars, that's a different story.
I don't smoke except for 2-3 cigars a year. Nice ones. I used to love meeting up with buddies and sharing a smoke and good single malt scotch at a smokey but highly popular bar in town that had loads of pool table. Stunk at pool, but it wasn't the point. Just fun and relaxing with pals catching a slow buzz for a few hours.
Then the smoke Nazis came. I will stop here as not to get banned for the stream of profanity on the tip of my lips...
Good for the Germans.
So is grilled meat, BBQ and BBQ smoke, lipstick, bacon and auto interior vapor, carpets, plywood and so on...
Well said. But according to your Surgeon General - IIRC - there is *no* safe limit for the deadly lethal carcinogen that is cigarette smoke.
Which is a surprise. After all, Sarin gas has a safe exposure level. Vaporized mercury has a safe limit. Ricin has a safe limit. Cigarette smoke - sorry, the deadly lethal carcinogen that is cigarette smoke - is truly a standout amongst all chemical toxins.
Interesting that when a smoking ban goes into effect in an American city everyone honors it from day one. But in a socialist country, there is widespread flouting of the law for the first six months.
A new second hand smoke gnatzi for F.R., just what we need.
Do you believe everything the nannies say, or just those things you want to believe?
I guess the Aum Shinrikyo cultists should have just lit a cigarette in the subway, its smoke being more deadly than Sarin and all.
I guess you haven't heard the news that there is nothing new in that report, note: NOT study, and that they used the same old data that got the EPA report thrown out in Federal court.
ETS, Environmental Tobacco Smoke, is an annoyance, not a death penalty, no matter how you try to make it into something more.
He lasted as long as I suspected he would.
The behavior of violent addicts.
No but they sure like to come to Nevada to smoke.
Lots of those “non smokers” you see in California are really closet smokers when they come to Nevada.. lol
“The behavior of violent addicts.”
Nope.. more then likely the behavior of those who want to enjoy a LEGAL product and have had enough.
How about the behaviour of the righteously indignant.
Yeh, yeh, we know that you consider ALL smokers addicts, and probably suspect that ALL are violent also.
Yes, of course - I get violent every time I am told I may not smoke in my own business, on my own property, by some socialist armed with guns and fake health data.
The guns don’t really bother me much, but the fake health data causes a viscaral reaction - somehow, I find it offensive when somebody lies to my face, using data only an idiot would believe.
Like the EPA, or PETA.
You must be really enraged at the insurance companies that charge higher rates for smoking based on all that fake health data according to you.
Not at all - I am enraged at the government, for claiming that any amount of exposure to second hand smoke is lethal.
And I am enraged at the idiots who believed them.
I am enraged at the idiots who claim smokers cost $4/pack, when the GAO said, it is actually $0.25/pack, and the tax is $7/pack.
I am enraged at the idiots who use this to outlaw smoking.
In other words, I just plain don’t like liars, and especially those who are bad at math.
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