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. (See my essay Smoke, Lies and the Nanny State and list of sources at www.joejackson.com 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
http://www.thefreesociety.org