Post by Bozur on Jan 13, 2006 0:55:54 GMT -5
New York Times
December 29, 2005
After 500 Years, Can Spain End Cigarette Binge?
BY RENWICK McLEAN
MADRID, Dec. 28 - Spaniards often seem to live at the corner bar,
stopping in before work, during work, and later as they head home. They
go to bars to thumb through the newspapers, to gossip and to meet
friends for cards. Just as surely as they will reach for a tapa to go
with their brandy or Rioja wine, they will reach for a cigarette.
The Spanish, who are said to have invented cigarettes 500 years ago,
smoke more of them per capita than anyone in Europe, except for the
Greeks. But starting on Jan. 1, smoking will be restricted in bars here,
a wrenching change for a people who tend to consider their favorite bar
an extension of their living room.
"We can go to a bar four or five times in a day, to have breakfast, a
coffee break, a beer," said Jos=E9 Luis Guerra, a deputy director at the
Spanish Hotel and Restaurant Federation. "This law is almost a revolution."
The law will prohibit smoking in bars and restaurants that are larger
than roughly 1,000 square feet, although these establishments will be
allowed to set up small smoking rooms that are sealed off from the main
areas of business.
It will also ban smoking in workplaces and a variety of other enclosed
public spaces, and will tighten restrictions on advertising and selling
tobacco products.
The law was approved by Parliament this month, and the government says
the new law is needed to prevent some of the 50,000 deaths attributed to
smoking each year in Spain
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/s=
pain/index.html?inline=3Dnyt-geo>.
Officials also say that citizens have the right to visit bars and
restaurants without being forced to inhale secondhand smoke, which kills
700 people a year here, according to government figures.
About 75 percent of Spaniards support the new law in principle,
according to a poll released in November by the Center for Sociological
Investigation, a government-financed research organization in Madrid.
But 70 percent of those polled said it would be hard for the public to
obey it.
Mr. Guerra said that Spain has about 300,000 bars and restaurants, one
for every 140 inhabitants. Many are smaller than 1,000 square feet, and
will be permitted under the law to choose whether they want to allow
smoking or not.
But the impact of the measure is still expected to be profound.
The hotel and restaurant federation estimates that business at bars and
restaurants will drop as much as 8 percent next year because of the new
restrictions, costing the industry about 1.6 billion euros.
The law also threatens to disrupt the daily routine of millions of
Spaniards, who have long relied on cigarettes and the local bar to get
them through the day.
"On Jan. 1 we start a new year, but we also start a new way of life,"
Mr. Guerra said. "The bars will suffer the most, because people may skip
the beer or soft drink if they can't smoke." Restaurants are less
dependent on spontaneous visits, he added.
Mart=EDn Esteban, the manager of Las Murallas bar and restaurant in
Madrid, said that almost all his customers smoked. "Tobacco is as
Spanish as the national celebration of bullfighting," he said. "If I
tell a customer he can't smoke, he's going to tell me off. There is
going to be trouble."
Mr. Esteban said he would create a small smoking room in the basement to
comply with the law without having to force any of the smokers to leave.
But he said that most of his customers seemed unprepared for the changes
required by the new law. "This is a very drastic measure," he said.
"It's going to be like trying to impose Prohibition in the United States."
Spaniards have been hooked on tobacco since shortly after Columbus and
other explorers brought it back from America and introduced it to
Europe. Spanish doctors soon attributed an array of medicinal qualities
to the plant, helping to increase a demand for tobacco that by the early
1500's had already led residents of Seville to begin collecting
discarded cigar butts and rolling them up in paper, making Europe's
first cigarettes.
Today, the average Spaniard smokes about 2,300 cigarettes a year, or 850
more than the typical European, according to a report by Euromonitor
International, a market research firm. While cigarette sales have been
dropping in the rest of Europe, they continued to rise in Spain in 2004,
according to the report.
The government says it wants to reverse this trend, but critics contend
that the restrictions are being imposed too abruptly. "What is being
proposed is an attempt to transform society, and transformations to
society cannot be assimilated overnight," said Mr. Guerra of the hotel
and restaurant federation.
December 29, 2005
After 500 Years, Can Spain End Cigarette Binge?
BY RENWICK McLEAN
MADRID, Dec. 28 - Spaniards often seem to live at the corner bar,
stopping in before work, during work, and later as they head home. They
go to bars to thumb through the newspapers, to gossip and to meet
friends for cards. Just as surely as they will reach for a tapa to go
with their brandy or Rioja wine, they will reach for a cigarette.
The Spanish, who are said to have invented cigarettes 500 years ago,
smoke more of them per capita than anyone in Europe, except for the
Greeks. But starting on Jan. 1, smoking will be restricted in bars here,
a wrenching change for a people who tend to consider their favorite bar
an extension of their living room.
"We can go to a bar four or five times in a day, to have breakfast, a
coffee break, a beer," said Jos=E9 Luis Guerra, a deputy director at the
Spanish Hotel and Restaurant Federation. "This law is almost a revolution."
The law will prohibit smoking in bars and restaurants that are larger
than roughly 1,000 square feet, although these establishments will be
allowed to set up small smoking rooms that are sealed off from the main
areas of business.
It will also ban smoking in workplaces and a variety of other enclosed
public spaces, and will tighten restrictions on advertising and selling
tobacco products.
The law was approved by Parliament this month, and the government says
the new law is needed to prevent some of the 50,000 deaths attributed to
smoking each year in Spain
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/s=
pain/index.html?inline=3Dnyt-geo>.
Officials also say that citizens have the right to visit bars and
restaurants without being forced to inhale secondhand smoke, which kills
700 people a year here, according to government figures.
About 75 percent of Spaniards support the new law in principle,
according to a poll released in November by the Center for Sociological
Investigation, a government-financed research organization in Madrid.
But 70 percent of those polled said it would be hard for the public to
obey it.
Mr. Guerra said that Spain has about 300,000 bars and restaurants, one
for every 140 inhabitants. Many are smaller than 1,000 square feet, and
will be permitted under the law to choose whether they want to allow
smoking or not.
But the impact of the measure is still expected to be profound.
The hotel and restaurant federation estimates that business at bars and
restaurants will drop as much as 8 percent next year because of the new
restrictions, costing the industry about 1.6 billion euros.
The law also threatens to disrupt the daily routine of millions of
Spaniards, who have long relied on cigarettes and the local bar to get
them through the day.
"On Jan. 1 we start a new year, but we also start a new way of life,"
Mr. Guerra said. "The bars will suffer the most, because people may skip
the beer or soft drink if they can't smoke." Restaurants are less
dependent on spontaneous visits, he added.
Mart=EDn Esteban, the manager of Las Murallas bar and restaurant in
Madrid, said that almost all his customers smoked. "Tobacco is as
Spanish as the national celebration of bullfighting," he said. "If I
tell a customer he can't smoke, he's going to tell me off. There is
going to be trouble."
Mr. Esteban said he would create a small smoking room in the basement to
comply with the law without having to force any of the smokers to leave.
But he said that most of his customers seemed unprepared for the changes
required by the new law. "This is a very drastic measure," he said.
"It's going to be like trying to impose Prohibition in the United States."
Spaniards have been hooked on tobacco since shortly after Columbus and
other explorers brought it back from America and introduced it to
Europe. Spanish doctors soon attributed an array of medicinal qualities
to the plant, helping to increase a demand for tobacco that by the early
1500's had already led residents of Seville to begin collecting
discarded cigar butts and rolling them up in paper, making Europe's
first cigarettes.
Today, the average Spaniard smokes about 2,300 cigarettes a year, or 850
more than the typical European, according to a report by Euromonitor
International, a market research firm. While cigarette sales have been
dropping in the rest of Europe, they continued to rise in Spain in 2004,
according to the report.
The government says it wants to reverse this trend, but critics contend
that the restrictions are being imposed too abruptly. "What is being
proposed is an attempt to transform society, and transformations to
society cannot be assimilated overnight," said Mr. Guerra of the hotel
and restaurant federation.