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
www.joejackson.com