Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2011 as an opinion piece written a few weeks after Spain’s ban on smoking inside bars and restaurants took effect; the claims about closures, new terraces and falling sales describe that moment.
Supposedly, the good news is that the anti-smoking law has been a success for the state, with newspapers filling their front pages with headlines like “State coffers begin to recover thanks to healthcare savings from the anti-smoking law” or “Public spending on prescriptions falls x% thanks to the anti-smoking law.”
Well, taking a closer look at what is actually happening, thanks to the anti-smoking law the number of owners thinking about closing down has risen sharply, unless they find some way out, such as becoming a “smokers’ club to get around the anti-smoking law“. The luckiest ones, having had to make a fresh investment in outdoor terraces with their butane heaters so customers don’t freeze, will be able to carry on with their businesses, although they too have seen sales drop.
Another piece of good news the anti-smoking law has brought us is that the botellón (young people gathering outdoors to drink in the street) has grown, because young smokers who didn’t use to take part in it have done the maths: “If I have to step outside a nightclub to smoke anyway, I’d rather go to a botellón.”
And what seems even more ironic is that while they boast that public spending on prescriptions has fallen, nobody mentions that sales of over-the-counter paracetamol have gone up, because sudden temperature changes are not good for you.
If a smoker in a venue at 30 degrees goes outside two or three times to smoke in the street at 5 degrees, that person won’t go to the doctor to have their smoking-related bronchitis looked at, but they will go and buy some paracetamol to ease the cold they caught from having to leave the venue to smoke.
So the news they should be announcing is not exactly the success of the anti-smoking law, but the damage it has done to bars and restaurants, the new expense these owners have had to take on to fit out the “new smoking area”, and the added problem of smokers, who now feel more discriminated against than ever.
As for the savings on prescriptions: good for the state, and good for pharmacies, which now sell far more painkillers than before, but very bad for everyone else.
Further reading: The first smokers’ club opens in Granada as a way around the anti-smoking law
Featured image: Ryan Tir from Vaughan, ON, Canada, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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