10 years smoking ban – TOP ONLINE

A year after the ban was introduced, 93.1 percent of the members of the GastroSuisse association complained about a drop in sales – most around 10, some 20 percent, bars, discos and clubs even more. The figures from the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) spoke a different language: As before 2010, the number of restaurants continued to increase and sales rose continuously until the (last evaluated) year 2018.

Some catering businesses also benefited from the legally prescribed evaporation of their bars, namely «smoking caves». The operators of the Zurich bodega, for example, reported back then that more customers are now coming to eat and that more sales are being generated at the tables than previously at the counter.

The supposed miracle of recovery

Good news also came from the medical side: in the two years before the cantonal smoking ban came into effect in 2008, 229 and 242 heart attacks were recorded in Graubünden. In the first year after the change, the number of heart attacks fell by 22 percent to 183, as the cantonal hospital announced at the time.

Critics interjected that this miraculous and surprisingly rapid improvement in public health was not clearly due to the ban on smoking in restaurants, but also to various other preventive measures against passive smoking.

Only the positive effect of the smoking ban on service employees was very scratch-resistant: for a study, waiters and waitresses were given a badge before May 1, 2010 that measured the smoke level. They inhaled on average as much pollutants in a single shift as if they had smoked five cigarettes. After the smoking ban came into force, the burden was 16 times lower and the health of service personnel was back at the level of three years ago.

When nobody thought bad …

Up until the Terry Report published in the United States in 1964, hardly anyone worried about the harmful effects of smoking. Dr. Luther L. Terry – then US Surgeon General – was the first to prove the causal link between smoking and lung cancer. The world was shaken.

From then on, systematic progress was made with the fight against smoke: in 1971, against the fierce resistance of the tobacco industry, the USA banned cigarette advertising on radio and television and prescribed warning labels on cigarette packets.

In the 1980s, US airlines began to reduce smoking, as did government agencies and companies in their offices, including in Switzerland. In 1996 Swissair stopped smoking on European flights and the following year on North Atlantic flights.

In 2004, the European Football Association UEFA banned smoking on coaches’ benches at international matches. And at the end of 2005, smoking was banned on all public transport in Switzerland. “Smoking ban” became the German-Swiss word of the year 2006. The federal law on protection against passive smoking of October 3, 2008 was therefore not a breach, but simply another step towards smoke-free public space.

The first smoker was a heretic

Nevertheless, smokers like to complain that they are demonized. This is nothing new, of course, and the very first smoker in Europe was even condemned as a heretic: the full seaman Rodrigo de Jerez, who belonged to the Columbus’ crew in 1492 and brought the centuries-old habit of tobacco smoking back to Spain from the New World, was heavily accused of his surroundings . A person who gushes smoke from his mouth must be the devil! The Inquisition found that too and booked the man in for seven years.

Pope Urban VII also felt godly blasphemy because he pronounced the very first smoking ban in 1590 (for churches) – with the threat of excommunication. In 1724, a successor, Pope Benedict XIII, lifted the ban again because he liked to smoke for life.

A hard headwind blew smokers in the Duchy of Lüneburg, where until 1692 – at least in theory – the death penalty was on the smoke. In Turkey Sultan Murad IV is said to have decapitated coffee drinkers, wine truffles and smokers by hand in 1633. In 1634 a tobacco prohibition was issued in Russia, the violation of which included slitting the nose. And in Persia, liquid lead was poured into the throat of smokers.

On the other hand, what is a bit less smoke in the stain?

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