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imomus
While you're leafing through Stil in Berlin's photographs of this city's coolest, most fuckable arty party animals, just remember one thing: they stink. If you could smell these carefully-assembled, dizzyingly diverse outfits, they'd all have one thing in common -- the ashen pong of fresh or stale cigarette smoke. Berlin is the last frontier of in-yer-face social smoking (only matched, it seems, by Tokyo). It's a town in which schall means rauch, buzz correlates to smoke, and youthful hedonism is triangulated between three constant props: the beer bottle, the cell phone, and the cigarette packet. It's been this way forever, and it'll stay this way till... well, till Tuesday, actually.
Because Tuesday, January 1st 2008 is a historic day -- the day Berlin becomes Germany's pioneering no smoking town. From Tuesday, smoking is banned in all official, health, cultural, sports, educational and children's facilities, in all restaurants and pubs, in airports, and in any space (except private homes) enclosed by walls and a ceiling. There's a standard fine of €1000 for the owner or occupier of any room in which smoking occurs, though there's a six month transition period in which fines won't be applied. Bars and restaurants will still be allowed to have a smoking room, but won't be allowed to offer service there.
The smoking ban has happened despite two things, the attempts of conservative chancellor Angela Merkel to block the ban, and the fact that the Nazis were anti-smoking, and that therefore anyone who tries to ban smoking is seen as some kind of "health Nazi".
The weird thing about the Nazis' anti-smoking policies is how utterly ineffective they were. Despite portraying smoking as a cosmopolitan-foreign-capitalist-savage plot to enslave the Aryans ("the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man for having been given hard liquor", Hitler once called tobacco), and despite taking out advertising and enacting legislation designed to wean Germans off the noxious weed, the Nazi period saw German per capita tobacco use rise rather than fall -- from 570 cigarettes a year in 1932 to 900 in 1939 (for comparison, French consumption in the same period grew from 570 to just 630 cigarettes)."Our Fuhrer Adolf Hitler drinks no alcohol and does not smoke," ran one 1937 poster campaign. "His performance at work is incredible." The target audience seems to have remained thoroughly unconvinced. German tobacco companies responded in two ways. First, they presented themselves as staunch supporters of the Nazi regime, launching "Stormtrooper cigarettes". They also launched a slew of pseudo-scientific "medical journals" intended to sew doubt about the anti-smoking movement and portray its proponents as "unscientific" and "fanatics". In an arm-wrestle between the Nazis and Big Tobacco, it seems, Big Tobacco won.
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Recent smoking bans have had a dramatically good effect on public health, improving the life-chances of smokers and non-smokers alike (but non-smokers slightly more). The Scottish smoking ban brought an immediate and significant cut in heart attack rates (Scotland's biggest killer). A smoking ban in Pueblo, Colorado saw hospital admissions for heart attacks fall by 27%. Secondhand cigarette smoke triggers a lot of heart attacks, apparently.It remains to be seen whether cool Berliners will continue to stink past Tuesday, and exactly what clever measures pubs and clubs and restaurants will take to circumvent the new legislation. Will they go as far as the inn in Lower Saxony which cut a smoking hole in its wall? Or, in a city notorious throughout Germany for the fact that people -- gasp! -- cross the road against the red man, will people just ignore the ban -- at least until those hefty fines kick in?
Personally, I'm delighted to see Big Tobacco given a great big kick in the bollocks here in Berlin. And I hope that, starting next week, our gorgeous hipsters start smelling as sweet as they look.
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Bang
Date: 2007-12-28 11:28 am (UTC)A.P.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 11:36 am (UTC)When I see a smoker I see someone who didn't have the balls to be different when they were a teenager. And they nearly all regret it by the time they're adults, but by then they're hooked. They're the tobacco company's bitch.
I will occasionally come across someone who adamantly claims it wasn't about peer pressure and that they genuinely started smoking because they enjoy the effects of the nicotine, but I don't buy that. If you only started for the nicotine why not buy nicotine gum or patches? That way you get the hit of nicotine without fucking up your lungs, or smelling, or making your teeth and nails yellow...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 11:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 12:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 12:24 pm (UTC)Summarising, I do find it extremely annoying going to a gig in Tokyo and coming out of it smelling like cigarettes (though I don't mind if my clothes smelled of barbeque charcoal. I'm not sure; I think it's just the way I was raised). But go to a gig in other countries and other annoying things will happen. Horses for courses. Reason why I don't go to gigs very often.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 12:53 pm (UTC)we in chicago-town, usa, face the ban in three days, as well, and there's no grace period like what you describe in berlin.
i'm a filthy smoker and i started late (contrary to kuma's stereotype) and can't quit soon enough. i hope this will give me the kick in the pants i need, but i have a feeling finding some way to remove all the worry and stress from my life will be more effective than a state-levied ban. i'm not really complaining, though; i get it, and i totally sympathize with non-smokers. there's nothing more vile than eating within 10m of someone who's puffing away, except maybe literally having your non-smoker clothes reek of it after a night out. i type this as i extinguish my last smoke for the night/day. something's got to give!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 12:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 01:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 01:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 01:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 01:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 01:20 pm (UTC)Not nice
Date: 2007-12-28 01:22 pm (UTC)not nice
Date: 2007-12-28 01:24 pm (UTC)Re: Not nice
Date: 2007-12-28 01:26 pm (UTC)not nice
Date: 2007-12-28 01:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 02:07 pm (UTC);-)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 02:54 pm (UTC)Late starters are rare in my experience. What possessed you to start as an adult?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 02:55 pm (UTC)Fwah
Date: 2007-12-28 03:03 pm (UTC)a needle's eye found in a desert,
a perforation in the packaging of fresh tomatoes in a Tokyo supermarket,
the space between a cash exchange for bratwurst in a German open air market,
this is the space for momus; as a jettison of milky,stank, VD pish is fired through the holes as described as above into the (gammy) eye of a posh moneyed blogistocrat...and he loves it; the poor,poor old,old fucker of an excuse that he is.
Re: Fwah
Date: 2007-12-28 03:09 pm (UTC)Re: Fwah
Date: 2007-12-28 03:13 pm (UTC)There's something about this holiday season -- these end-of-year doldrums -- that brings out completely off-topic personal anon-attacks (though I outed you, sorry!). It's like all the slightly maladjusted people get scary and deranged from Christmas to New Year, and just sit hunched and drunk by a trashcat, fecking this and fecking that.
Re: Fwah
Date: 2007-12-28 03:22 pm (UTC)"its not about design, its about functionality...the cooking aspect of japanonaise heaters is the best. open topped parafin heaters make great grounds for baked yakimo and traditional potatoes or popping a big nabe pot to bubble away with plenty cabbage, kimichi and pork, its not just a heater, its a slow cooker....cover the top with foil throw on a few eringi japanese mushrooms with butter and melt when you eat em, for the older grilled non flat topped versions, stick your yakitori skewers at safe angles for slow char grilled treats...but momus drones on about design and other pish for his own gratification....parafin stoves have other uses than weblog vacant commentary"
The odd "pish" here and there, but a much more healthy tone and some substantive points to make. A tour guide, not an alkie geek with Tourette's!
Smoke 'em if you got' em
Date: 2007-12-28 03:29 pm (UTC)Now the American G.I. knew what real cool was. Nothing like a liberator with a Lucky Strike dangling from the corner of his mouth.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-28 03:40 pm (UTC)