Tobacco.org

• Czechs clarify smoking legislation but total ban still long way off  

The Czech Republic clarified – rather than tightened – its smoking legislation on Friday, when the Senate passed an amendment to the law on smoking in public places. The amendment was very much a compromise between anti-smoking campaigners on one hand, and those trying to protect people’s right to light up in bars and restaurants on the other. But as Rob Cameron reports, a total ban – such as that which exists in many European countries - is still a long way off.

As any visitor to Prague already knows, smokers are mostly free to light up anywhere and anytime they want in Czech bars, pubs and restaurants. The present legislation merely requires the owners of such establishments to divide seating areas into smoking and non-smoking, but when all that means is smoke wafting over from a smoking area into a non-smoking area, that separation is largely imaginary.

The new law attempts to clarify that. From now on – if the president signs it – pubs and restaurants will decide whether they are smoking or not, and will be obliged to say so on the door. Veteran anti-smoking campaigner Boris Šťastný, one of the MPs who drew up the amendment, had this to say to the online news server novinky.cz:

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• AUDIO: Smoke in the face of Czech anti-tobacco campaigners  

The Czech Republic has taken a step against the anti-smoking flow in the rest of Europe. While anti-smoking bans have spread across the continent in recent years, Czech MPs have proposed a relaxation of the current rules for smoking in pubs and restaurants. Anti-smoking groups say they have caved in to pressure from the powerful tobacco lobby.

Czech MPs on Wednesday backed a proposal that owners of food serving pubs and restaurants can decide from the middle of next year whether their establishments are smoking or not.

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• Poll: Czech children worst in cigarette smoking  

Czech children are among the youths that smoke the highest number of cigarettes in the world, the daily Lidove noviny (LN) wrote on Wednesday, citing the latest survey of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) based on data from 2005-2006.

Nearly one qarter of 15-year-old Czech girls (23 percent) smoke regularly, which is the second highest number in the world, with the neighbouring Austria being the worst.

Among 15-year old Czech boys, one fifth (20 percent) smoke regularly. The situation is worse only in Austria, Finland and Hungary.

In Sweden and the United States, the number of smokers among children is three times lower than in the Czech Republic, the survey shows.

"The Czechs have figured in top positions in similar surveys for a long time. This is a result of the general atmosphere in society that still does not consider smoking among youths a serious problem," Zdenek Dienstbier, head of the Cancer League organisation, told the paper.

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• Night & Day: No butts about it 

The Association of Restaurants and Hotels in the Czech Republic recently announced that more than 260 non-smoking establishments are now operating in Prague — a sign of either progress or Californication, depending on one’s perspective.

However, if you ask the Česká Koalice Proti Tabáku (Czech Coalition Against Tobacco), and exclude coffee shops and Internet cafés from your request, the number plummets to something like 49. And many of those, such as Ambiente on Mánesova and Ferdinanda near the museum, merely cordon off a nonsmoking section.

Nothing wrong with that approach, but it hardly suggests a trend. There are, however, a few very good and completely (or largely) smoke-free places in town. A sampling:

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• Czechs spend more on tobacco, alcohol than on health  

Czechs spend more on tobacco, alcohol and other unhealthy habits than on the protection of their health, according to a report on health care worked out within the Round table project and released.

Czechs do not like cash payments in health care apart from their health insurance.

"People expect that all their health problems to be solved by somebody else and desirably for free if they pay health insurance," Stanislav Vachek, analyst of the Round table on the future of the health care system's funding project.

In EU countries, households spend two to five percent of their budget on health.

Czech households spent 1.5 times more on tobacco, alcohol and other unhealthy habits than on health.

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• Quarter of Czechs steadily smoking - survey  

Prague- Some one-quarter of Czechs are smokers and the proportion has remained unchanged over the past decade, according to a survey conducted by the State Health Institute (SZU) last year and unveiled by Ladislav Csemy from the Prague Psychiatric Centre today.

In 2007, smokers accounted for 26.6 percent of the total Czech population, while the figure was 26.2 percent ten years ago, Csemy said.

Some 3.4 percent of Czechs smoke occasionally, he added.

The figures are to highlight the World No Tobacco Day 2008 to be held on May 31.

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• LN: Austria takes tough stance on cigarette imports 

Austrian customs officials have started imposing tough fines on persons bringing Czech cigarettes to Austria and in addition they confiscate all the non-permitted cigarettes they find, the daily Lidove noviny wrote Tuesday.

Czechs taking out more than one carton of Czech cigarettes while travelling for holiday to Croatia via Austria could be severely punished because the Austrian customs officials have started imposing tough fines on all drivers who violate "the tobacco law" while crossing the Austrian border, the paper says.

Under the law, passed shortly before the Czech Republic joined the Schengen area without border checks last December, one person can only take out 200 pieces of cigarettes with the Czech-language health warning message while travelling from the Czech Republic to Austria.

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• Právo: Foreigners raid Czech cigarette market  

Foreigners buy roughly one-fourth of the 73 billion pieces of cigarettes annually sold in the Czech Republic where tobacco products are still cheaper than in Germany or Austria despite the gradual increase, the daily Pravo writes today.

A cigarette shopping spree is widespread in the border areas, Pravo writes.

"Last year, foreigners took some 5.6 billion cigarettes out of the Czech Republic. Conversely, some 1.8 billion cigarettes were taken to the Czech Republic from Poland, Ukraine and Slovakia," Kamil Provaznik, an executive of the company Imperial Tobacco, told the paper.

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• Sparks flying in cigarette dispute 

Industry and Trade Minister Martin Říman is now calling on groups afflicted by Austria’s limit on Czech cigarette imports, like the “trafika” newsstands dotting the border, to sue the country through the European Union legal system.

Austrians are allowed to bring only 200 cigarettes, 100 cigarillos, 50 cigars or 250 grams of loose tobacco home from their visits to the Czech Republic — limits that technically should apply only to non-EU states. For member states, the EU sets guideline levels four times higher.

“This is not about getting more money to flow into the state treasury. It’s a matter of principle,” said Tomáš Bartovský, spokesman for the Industry and Trade Ministry. “[In this case] one EU member state is restricting the free trade of goods from another member state.”

It’s atypical for member states to file complaints against each other, hence Říman’s plea to tobacconists, Bartovský added.

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• Most Czechs support ban on smoking in restaurants, not bars-poll  

More than half of Czechs support banning smoking in restaurants but only 39 percent would ban smoking in bars and cafes, according to a poll the CVVM polling agency gave to CTK.

More than half of respondents said that smoking should not be prohibited in night clubs and cafes, the poll showed.

An overwhelming majority of Czechs - 95 percent - believe that there should be a ban on smoking in theatres, cinemas and public transport premises. Three-quarters of respondents (76 percent) supported the smoking ban at work places, seven in ten respondents said that smoking should be banned at rail stations, bus stops and at airports.

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• Clearing away the smoke 

At the start of the new year, France and parts of Germany became the latest to join the smoking-ban trend that has recently swept through the European Union. Many new member countries, however, seem reluctant to sign on, including the Czech Republic.  

Every once in a while, talk of a possible smoking ban begins to circulate, but nothing substantial ever seems to come of such discussions. But the issue is starting to gain momentum again and many advocates hope the threat to people’s health from smoking will finally motivate politicians to make some positives changes.

Smoking is practically an institution around these parts. In fact, some health reports claim as many as 50 Czechs a day die of smoking-related diseases. In 2004, statistics from the World Health Organization showed 25 percent of the country’s population above the age of 15 were daily smokers.

Boris Sˇtˇasˇtn‡, a Civic Democrat in the Chamber of Deputies, has made it his personal mission to get a comprehensive anti-smoking bill passed.

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• 10 Questions 

By Feb. 1, both German states bordering the Czech Republic — Bavaria and Saxony — will have banned smoking in public places, joining a list of European countries that have similar bans, including France, Ireland and Italy. Despite growing public support, residents of the Czech Republic remain generally resistant to such a ban, which must be welcome news to Dominic Brisby of Imperial Tobacco, one of the major tobacco companies operating in the country. Brisby talks to The Prague Post about bans, black-market cigarettes and upcoming price hikes.

? Does Imperial oppose the smoking bans we’ve seen spread across Europe in the past few years?

We think outright bans are disproportionate and unnecessary. We understand that some people find cigarette smoke annoying, but if consumers really wanted pubs and restaurants to ban smoking then the market would take care of this by itself. In a free society it does not seem unreasonable to be allowed to sit down at the end of a day’s work with a beer and a cigarette. . . .

I think Czech people place great value on personal liberty and freedom of choice. Perhaps Czech people, having lived under a communist system, are also less willing to allow politicians to micromanage every aspect of their lives. . . .

In the Czech Republic, we pride ourselves on our ability to respond quickly to events — whether consumer demands or competitors’ actions — as well as our perfect execution in the market. As a result of all this, Imperial Tobacco is the fastest-growing tobacco company in the country.

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• President Klaus infuriates doctors with stance on smoking-ban  

President Klaus is famous for his views on Co2 emissions – namely that they are not responsible for climate change. Now, he has shifted his gaze to smoking, and angered other elements of the scientific community, suggesting that passive smoking might not be the health risk that it’s made out to be. As Czech MPs start debating whether smoking should be banned in the country’s restaurants, Mr Klaus has told the press that such a ban would deny smokers their rights, and that the effects of passive smoking are less dangerous than people say. . . .

President Klaus is not a smoker, but is fervently against any sort of smoking-ban in the country’s restaurants. He has even been quoted as saying that a smoking-ban would infringe upon smokers’ human rights. Eva Králíková is a specialist in smoking-related diseases, she is stunned by Mr Klaus’s comments: “I see it in exactly the opposite way, because the freedom to breathe fresh air and clean air seems to be more important to me.”

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• Smoking bans a smoldering issue 

With little chance a smoking ban will pass Parliament in the near future, Czechs should continue to puff away on their cigarettes in pubs and restaurants undisturbed this year. In the neighboring Länder of Saxony and Bavaria, however, smokers are getting some government-imposed fresh air. Both German states have passed bans on smoking in public places; Bavaria’s ban came into effect Jan. 1 and Saxony’s will begin Feb. 1. The German laws, combined with eased border protections following the Czech Republic’s entry into the Schengen zone, have launched a raft of speculation in the local media about the phenomenon of smoker tourism: Bavarians crossing the border to yield to their particular vice. But on both sides of the border, restaurant owners are not working themselves into a tizzy over smoking. German and Czech owners surveyed by The Prague Post confessed that, rather than waves of nicotine-addicted Germans, what may be wafting over the border is an anti-smoking movement.

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• Supporters call for smoking ban in restaurants 

Anti-smoking supporters are now calling for a total ban on smoking in restaurants, cafes and bars by Jan. 1, 2009, Lidové Noviny reports.

The Czech Parliament's health committee plans to submit a revised anti-smoking legislation amendment soon supporting the ban. The original version of the amendment only mentioned a partial ban, with restaurant owners required to build separate facilities of smokers.

Restaurant owners are currently only required to put up non-smoking signs.

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