Smoking ban is proposed

After years of reluctance to include restaurants in any public smoking ban, Boris Šťastný (Civic Democrats, ODS), chairman of the Health Committee of the Parliament and a doctor, is pushing to make the ban a reality by 2014, with the Czech Republic remaining in the minority of European Union countries not to have such restrictions.

"Some time has passed, and the Chamber of Deputies has changed as well as the attitude of the public toward more widespread support for the protection of the nonsmokers," Šťastný said. "While in the former election period, the health minister together with the prime minister blocked the new law, these days it is on the contrary."

At present, restaurants need only to clearly label themselves as smoking, nonsmoking or mixed, with separate areas for smokers and nonsmokers.

Indeed about 70 percents of nonsmokers are in favor of a ban, some 20 percent higher than four years ago, but even 33 percent of smokers support a ban opposed to 13 percent four years ago, according to the Median polling agency.

The new proposal by Šťastný includes a gradual phasing-in of changes, with the first step a law preventing children under the age of 18 from entering places where smoking is allowed, with a full ban taking effect in 2014.

The plan is hardly the first attempt of its kind and is drawing opposition from the restaurant owners, a regular opponent of such changes.

A survey carried out by the MindBridge agency among 750 restaurant owners in the country and published by the Hotels and Restaurants Association of the Czech Republic (AHR ČR), showed that 71 percent consider the complete ban a "an interference into the freedom of their business."

"In European countries that introduced the smoking ban, the law is often bypassed by the creation of clubs where smoking is allowed," said AHR ČR President Václav Stárek.

"In restaurants, most smokers move to the terrace or outside the restaurant's entrance. This is not a solution in our view."

Some 2,000 people die each year as a result of passive smoking in the Czech Republic, according to the website Stopkouření.cz, which campaigns for a full ban on smoking in public places. Exposure to smoke at the workplace causes 7,200 deaths per year in the EU, 2,800 of which are nonsmokers, predominantly employees in the entertainment and hotel industries, according to the website.

Pavel Hlinka, the vice president of the Czech Confederation of Commerce and Tourism (SOČR), worries about the impact that a ban would have on business.

"Every year, we lose approximately 5 percent of restaurants, and this step would clearly mean a further increase in unemployment," he said.

While surveys ordered by the tobacco industry assert that when forced to become nonsmoking, restaurants lose money, more extensive studies of such changes in countries like Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Spain show little such impact.

"Regarding SOČR's argument about the right to run a business, I would like to point out that the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Basic Freedoms embedded in the Czech Constitution prohibits damaging the health of another human being," Šťastný said.

Eva Králíková, a former smoker and head of the Tobacco Dependence Treatment Center, said that "delaying the creation of nonsmoking areas is nonsense."

"The only ones who have interest in postponing [a smoking ban] are the tobacco producers," she said. "The deputies in this country either have not been so far able to find the relevant information or they act in the interest of the tobacco industry instead the citizens of the Czech Republic."

Klára Jiřičná can be reached at
kjiricna@praguepost.com