Do you think a smoking ban would be a good thing in Polish restaurants and Bars?

No, there aren't. few of the pubs have air-conditioning. They might start out ok in the early part of the evening, but by the time the place fills up it get's hellish. If we want to catch a music gig, then we expect to be reeking of smoke and having headaches later.

Now, I've never smoked, but it's not that I'm a rabid anti-smoker. I used to work in bars and hang around with smokers all the time. I think age is just catching up with me.


Yep, I know what you mean.

Mind you, a ban in pubs wouldn't be too bad for them, they could always go for a drive and have a smoke at the whell.

What about this whole lot of places that you cannot easily say if it's a bar/pub or a restaurant. Pubs serve meals too. Should this count?

It's simple - noone would deny right to smoke. You want to smoke - you go outside (or to smoker's room etc.) without affecting the whole place. The majority of society does not smoke. Now it is upside down - non-smokers have not much option and what's important I think - the staff has no option but to inhale the smoke either. It is not a problem now in some other countries which imposed this ban. People just go outside for a smoke. Is it so hard?

I know a couple of places in Wroclaw that are smoke free. Unfortunately, they aren't exactly booming...


Then why not just open non smoking bars? Isn't that the solution? I mean the majority don't smoke. Why is no one doing this?

Dunno. There isn't many smoke-free places, but the number is growing I think.
It's a matter of awareness and culture I guess however, this particularly should be regulated by some law as there is no bad side of imposing such ban. Would it be very problematic to go out for a smoke? I haven't seen anyone whining about it outside Poland and I also did go outside if felt such a need. The only problem is that now really good bars that many would want to visit stink and don't have good ventilation and smoke-absorbing system. And after such a visit all clothes, everything smell bad. Real bad! :)

I think that this ban would make smokers smell less also :))

I found these two websites:

LokalBezPapierosa.pl
PolskaBezDymu.pl

Yep, I'd agree with that.

The other thing is that I don't think many people would go to a non-smoking pub when all their friends want to go to a smokey hole.

Why do you need a law to enforce something that has the market behind it? We don't need a law to settle this one. More laws is always a bad thing. Just vote with your money, let the people that run the bars decide if they want to get on the bandwagon and attract new customers, or stay with the old model and turn people away. It's a huge intrusion on the rights of the bar owner. There is absolutely no reason for a law.


You've just hit the nail on the head, it's not economically viable because the majority of the people don't want it. If the majority of the people did actually want it, you'd see many many more smoke free pubs and restaurants. I vote with my money, we all can do the same. I got to bars that allow smoking, because I like to smoke when I drink and talk with friends. I refuse to eat at places that allow smoking. Why can't you do the same?

But they do have an option, work in a bar or not? Simple yeah?

As for Poland, they will sooner or later ban smoking in bars - Im a smoker and I dont actually mind, Im happy to go outside and sit near the heaters most bars have installed - I prefer not to stink of stale fag butts when I wake up the next day (yes... even smokers are aware of the horrid smell)..I also like the fact I smoke less, win win situation for me to be honest...

Your friends are either smokers or they are not assertive. Have you thought about what they like?? Maybe blowing the smoke in their faces in not exactly the type of fun they'd like. Or maybe not.


Yeah, everyone can just pick a job they like and get it. Especially when you're a bartender or a waitress you have a whole bunch of non-smoking bars to work at and they all wait with open arms. You always have an option not to work, you're right! It's like saying to a welder that he can work safely when he buys his goggles and other safety equipment or work without it with no protection and go blind. Simple choice you say...

I'm not talking of restaurants, I'm on about pubs. In a country like Poland there is very little consideration that non-smokers might have a problem, so few pubs bother. I'd be a hermit if I did that.

As the saying goes; cigarettes produce smoke, it gets in my hair and over my clothes. I like beer, which produces urine. Would you like it if I p1ssed over your head?

I would like it if you p1ssed over his head. :)

My girlfriend doesn't smoke. She won't go to places that allow smoking, and I respect that choice. My friends speak up when they don't like something. If the music is crap, the service is crap, or if the atmosphere is crap. If they weren't assertive, they probably wouldn't be my friends.

I don't like the smell of grease in my clothes, but every now and then I find myself in a McDonalds. I also don't like the smell of car exhaust, yet almost everyday I find myself coming home smelling like the city. Is there a ban in the works for those two as well? Drunks **** me off too, alcohol ban? Drunks after all are the ones ****ing in the street, making everything smell like urine and depositing their kebabs on the sides of buildings.


You were talking about majorities earlier. Pubs would bother if non smoking patrons were in the majority. I'm willing to go in halves with you on starting a non smoking pub, if you can show me that there is a demand for it. Make a good enough argument, and I'd be willing to finance the whole thing.

Serves you right for going to the palace of evil!


Well, there has been a number of laws passed on exhausts.


In UK public drunkenness, littering and anti-social behaviour can be prosecuted.


In Poland it would probably be a waste of time. I know a fair number of people who don't smoke but they are probably too tolerant or passive for their own good. If a place is too bad i just don't return, but who cares about me? There'll be someone else to buy beer in my place.

Let's be clear, I have no problem sitting in a well-ventilated, room, even with smokers at my table. It is these places which just turn into fug-holes and the door has to be opened before there's any air.

Hahaha, I love this comparison (kudos to you for that)!


It is impossible to ban the things you mention, and it is possible to regulate smoking in public places, which would then give the choice not to inhale someone's "exhaust fumes". It is about that choice. Don't say that people who don't want to smell like smokes can always stay home - that is not much of a choice, is it :). And I bet it wouldn not hurt you to go every now and then to go out to smoke, seriously.

Glad you like it. sadly it's not my own.

I haven't read through all the posts on this thread, so I apologize if my comment is redundant. Just a simple observation: if all bars and restaurants are mandated by law to be smoke-free, how can anyone argue that it will affect business? You mean to say that people will just stop going to pubs if they can't smoke there? Doesn't make any sense.

Here in Canada we (finally!) banned smoking, and the only side effect was healthier places to eat, drink and hang out. Period. People just smoke outside.

People often observe that Poles have a "culture of entitlement", and I'm hard-pressed to think of a better example of this than having the opinion that other people should just go home if they don't like you poisoning their air. What a ridiculous and ignorant sentiment. Would you be OK with me bringing my motorcycle into the pub and letting it idle? If you don't like carbon monoxide poisoning, then go home! [...]

Why? In Germany there are zones that only certain cars which meet stringent emission standards can drive through.


No, people that choose to go out can choose to go to bars which are non smoking. I would actually be more comfortable with a ban on smoking in non private establishments (public areas). It's a matter of the rights of the owner of the establishment.

Once the government figures out that quite a bit of domestic abuse and violence stems from consumption of alcohol, I would expect that to go as well. We can't forgot all the hardship that families go through (and the burden on the public health system) when a loved one dies of heart disease, so no more fatty foods in restaurants.

Why don't people just take some responsibility? The means to change it is there. Open a non smoking bar, where the majority apparently would go to, and let nature run its course. See, no need for laws. You can't get this right back, ever. Once it's gone, it's gone for good and sets a great precedent for other violations of private property laws.

Touche!


Ok, but this is what, like a 0.1% of the traffic or even less? It's such a small number that it falls into "interesting but insufficient" category;)


Do you have any idea of how many people die and/or get terminally ill of smoking or involountary inhaling tobacco? Fat is not as great enemy and noone forces anyone to eat excessive amounts of fat (McDonald's is also your choice I myself am not tempted that much). I am quite thin, with average cholesterol, but I'm getting poisoned everytime I enter any bar because of the smoke.

Are you so lazy that you are not willing to go out for a smoke? I think this is actually a good law to impose (one of few I agree, but "letting the nature to decide" is not applicable here) but it'll serve EVERYONE, even you who don't agree with it. I didn't want to sound like that but I need to point out also that the costs of treatment of each person with lung cancers and other smoking-caused diseases is on the whole society. That is very expensive and not many of those people have ever paid for their treatment. How do you argue that? I don't want to be paying for your cancer treatment. Or mine because of you. Smoker:))))

Actually most of the bigger cities are covered. I wouldn't call all the city traffic insignificant.


It's not a matter of being lazy or not, if the owner of a bar wants me to smoke outside, it's no problem at all. It should be up to the person paying the rent there as to what happens on their premises. Reducing the fat content of foods would serve EVERYONE, why not legislate that? The same goes for alcohol? Look at how much damage it does!


Trust me, you definately won't be paying for my cancer treatment.

Restaurants? I'm fine with that, no problems there! But a smoking ban in pubs? Open a few smoking pubs, and open a few non-smoking pubs.

Everybody happy.

:)

Yes, I had to buy some green sticker for 15 euro (or sthg like that) to place on the windshield if I wnated to drive inside Berlin. But I have an ordinary car, not so environmentally friendly. Most cases this is a one time fee, depending on the type of car etc. (diesel)

Or maybe you are talking about sthg different?


How do you know? If you go to hospital in a week or so... Anyway I don't wish you that of course. But someone may be paying for you in the future, you increase this chance greatly.

Only some cars are able to get the sticker. Cars without a catalytic converter for instance can't get a sticker. Large trucks can't get them. Quite a few older cars don't qualify for class 4.


I guess if you have the same insurance provider as I do, I suppose you might be paying in and we'd be sharing the cost. I can't even imagine how many people are using my contribution to pay for things like childbirth, bypass surgery, dialysis, hell, psychological care.


Amen, if there's a demand for it, the places will open. Apparently there isn't enough demand for it right now...

Hell? I am not paying for that! Hell no! :)))

Have you read your policy? It's in the fine print...

Last time I checked, hell was free of charge. It came as an added value for one's deeds if one subscribed to any hell theory supporting religion:)))

My provider charges me for it. You got a good deal.

I own the place, so thank you for your contribution.

;)

Where's the smoke there's fire, they say (slighlty twisted Polish saying Nie ma dymu bez ognia), hehe.

But more seriously:
The reason why there should be a law banning smoking in cafes and restaurants etc. is that laws are (ideally) to protect people and to impose order. We all find some laws we don't like (for some it's: speed limits on highways, legalization of some narcotics but not other, bureaucracy etc.), but so far we haven't figured out a better way to introduce order. And sadly I have to say it is very common for smokers not to respect the non-smokers rights, while rambling on their right to smoke. Smokers can smoke. Is their weak will and proneness to addiction so bad that they need this right to smoke everywhere? That's simply not respecting any rights but their own, let alone the health argument. I'd call that narrow-minded and very biased.

There's actually one very good reason to introduce a smoking ban - to raise revenue for restaurants, cafes and pubs. For example -

I was in Marche in Wroclaw last week. Group of three were in there, sitting, smoking and talking. They had finished their meals and drinks, yet continued to sit there, smoking and taking up a table when the place was very busy.

Then yesterday, again, some people in a cafe in Poznan, sitting, smoking and not actually spending any money apart from the one drink they had. They had finished the drinks, yet were staying there and smoking.

There's more examples, these are just the ones I've picked up on lately. It seems that non-smokers won't hang around once they're finished - or they'll buy more.

It seems, at least from what I can observe, that smokers will use cigarettes as a substitute for food or drink - whereas non smokers will always go and fetch another drink. For that reason, a smoking ban will discourage people from sitting there - thus you can get someone else through the door and spending money.


They'll still go. All the evidence in the UK suggests that it's the governments other policies and the breweries that are causing pubs to close, not the smoking ban. In fact, I seem to recall that Scotland and Ireland both recorded increases in pub visitors after the ban - not a decrease!

The thing that mystifies me is that the current Polish government has been hammering smokers with taxes - I think there's another increase about to happen? Yet they don't ban smoking indoors - and this is absolutely illogical.

Laws which infringe on personal and property rights aren't good.


It's not about the rights of the smokers, it's about the private property rights of the operators of the establishment. Feel free to ban smoking in publicly owned areas. If the majority of people don't want it, no problem. The problem is when you start telling private citizens what they can and can't do at their private premises. Again, I would think that if the majority actually wanted non smoking bars and restaurants, the proprietors would respond and you would see a lot of non smoking bars open up...without being legislated. The goal of a bar owner is to get customers in the door, that's why we have things like happy hour and theme nights. Show your local bar owner that they can make money being non smoking, and they will do it.


That is a terrible reason to create legislation. If that were true, restaurants cafes and pubs would already be non smoking. You can't tell me that someone running a place is purposefully making less money just to allow smoking...

Of course, I agree, but we all have such laws now, a lot of them. This one would be actually the best of the bad laws:)

- Running a bar is a special kind of business as you open your premises for the public and therefore make the place public in this sense (maybe not in legal sense, let some lawyer here explain?). So bar owners actually can and should and are subject to some general "public" laws, such as health and safety (Polish SANEPID), fire safety regulations, and lots of others. Just ask a bar owner what permissions s/he had to obtain prior to opening the bar.

I think maybe it could be stated that a proprietor of a bar has to establish either smoking or non-smoking bar (and presumably pay some higher health tax!) and there actually should be special BARS FOR SMOKERS not other way round. That is a soluion: I just turned the anti-ban ramblers' argument into my own:).

Why then such a law was imposed in some other countries in Europe. Do you think Sweden and many other countries made mistake or protected their citizens etc?