Jump to full article: The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition, 2009-01-02
Author: CHRISTINA PASSARIELLO
Intro: Although countries including France, Britain and Italy have introduced bans on smoking in public, Europeans are having a hard time stamping out their nicotine habit. In some cases, that has forced governments to soften antismoking legislation. . . .
Lighting up doesn't carry the social stigma in Europe that it carries in the U.S. Many famous Europeans -- including the Pope, French soccer star Zinedine Zidane and Britain's Prince Harry -- have been known to puff in private without burning their public image. U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, on the other hand, has spoken publicly about the pressure he feels to quit smoking. . . .
But smoking has become a heavy burden for Europe's state-run social-welfare systems, with smoking-related diseases costing well over $100 billion a year.
One out of two teens and adults smokes in Austria, one of the highest smoking rates in Europe. In 2007, 14,000 people died from smoking-related diseases out of an overall population of 8.2 million.
Smoking is common among women and teenagers as well as men. Austrian girls light up, on average, before their 12th birthdays, the youngest age in Europe, according to the World Health Organization.
The Austrian love for cigarettes dates from the 19th century . . .
Many attribute the laxity of the new antismoking law to Ms. Kdolsky, a proponent of free choice when it comes to cigarettes. The 46-year-old former anesthesiologist and hospital director had been a smoker since the age of 16 until she recently ditched the habit.
"Smokers are old enough to decide on their own," she said in an interview last year.
Opinion polls showed that most Austrians were against a full-blown smoking ban, says Ms. Kdolsky. She dismisses claims about the dangers of secondhand smoke. "No international study tells you that sitting in a restaurant for two hours as a passive smoker brings you harm," she says.
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