Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2011; it is a day-of-news opinion piece written on the first day of Spain’s tougher smoking law, in force from 2 January 2011.
As we all know, Spain’s new 2011 smoking law bans smoking in every leisure venue, including bars, cafés, restaurants, pubs and nightclubs. The first day of the smoking ban has angered the owners of these establishments, who have noticed how customers reacted to not being able to smoke indoors: in some cases they simply didn’t come in, and in others they cut their visit short.
In some pubs there were more people at the door than inside, and the conversation was the same everywhere. This smoking ban has arrived at the worst possible moment for a sector like hospitality and nightlife, which had already been hit by the crisis but was holding on. Now the situation is going to get considerably worse.
I’m not in favor of this law and, ironic as it may sound, I’m not in favor of selling tobacco either. But as long as the state treats this drug as legal and keeps making astronomical profits from a poison that kills millions of people, I think that if it isn’t going to ban it, it should at least let owners decide whether their customers can smoke on the premises, since the state won’t compensate them for the losses that are about to come.
Although we’ve been led to believe that the hospitality sector improved in countries where this law has been applied, that is a big lie: according to real data, the law has been responsible for losses running into the millions in this sector.
What is clear is that the law has come at the worst time. It won’t get our young smokers to quit. Instead, it will encourage botellón (drinking outdoors in the street), because if they can’t smoke in a bar, they’ll end up smoking in the street with a drink in hand.
Fines for breaking the law range from €30 to €600,000, with minor, serious and very serious offences.
So: a smoking ban, a law that allows the expropriation of a vehicle… is it just me, or is this already a dictatorship?
Further reading
- Vehicle expropriation: the government’s new business
- The new DGT Multanova speed camera: road safety or revenue raising?
Featured image: Smokers outside the Cartwheel Bar, Wellmeadow, Blairgowrie by Mike Pennington, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
