Tag Archives: smoking ban

Slippery Slope

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Christoph has been after me for some time now to write something for smokingbandits and I, true to form, have been procrastinating. I guess I’d rather expend my ever more limited energies on attacking and subduing antismoking rhetoric than preaching to the converted… There are bones I could pick with some in the smokers’ rights fold, but let’s save that for another day. A better start would be my own evolution as an advocate for our delightful “filthy” habit. I started smoking at 13 (unless you count the puffs Dad used to give me off his Marlboros to see the … Continue reading →

Throwback Thursday: Forbidden Conference

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Ten years ago, on January 27 – 28, 2009, the first (of two) big conferences of TICAP (The International Coalition Against Prohibition) took place. This organization, founded the year prior as an umbrella organization especially against Tobacco Control, was in its budding phase.(The then) active groups, such as FORCES international, its Italian and Dutch divisions, Netzwerk Rauchen from Germany, Freedom2Choose from Britain, various Canadian and Danish associations as well as other smaller associations united and prepared to hold the first international conference of independent opponents to tobacco prohibition on European soil. And why not to hold this conference in the … Continue reading →

New alternatives in Austria

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An acquaintance from Germany asked me to provide a comment concerning the Austrian anti-smoker’s petition. We first met online in the noughties, when we both were somehow surprised, flabbergasted, as well as horrified about the strictly choreographed wave of hatred and  destructiveness towards smokers, that had come over from the USA to us in Europe. Mostly in agreement, we were sure that the aggressiveness against smokers would cause a fragmentation of society and the destruction of the coexistence we had been used to, and that this would become a longer lasting development. We should be proved right. Indeed, a lot … Continue reading →

Throwback Thursday: Smoke, lies and Joe Jackson

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Joe Jackson, who has been a globally successful musician for more than 40 years, with more than a dozen studio albums and hits like „Steppin’ Out“ or „Is she really going out with him“, has also acquired a reputation as a critical mind within our movement. Besides his profession as an artist, he has regularly attacked tobacco prohibition and healthism with opinion pieces and interviews. The Briton, who escaped the smoking bans in New York and in the UK by moving to wild Berlin, in 2007 took over the patronage of an initiative by Netzwerk Rauchen. In the same year, … Continue reading →

Privacy in the home legal fund

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Privacy in the home against intrusive government is entitled to an unparalleled level of protection. ” ‘Big Brother’ cannot, in the name of Public health, dictate to anyone what he can eat or drink or smoke in the privacy of his own home.” [emphasis theirs] — People v. Sinclair, 387 Mich. 91 (1972)24 The U.S. Supreme Court essentially echoed that when it wrote: “The Constitution extends special safeguards to the privacy of the home… It is hardly necessary to catalog the myriad activities that may be lawfully conducted within the privacy and confines of the home, but may be prohibited in public.” — United … Continue reading →

Ten Years Smoking Ban in Bavaria

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A good ten years have passed since smoking bans were introduced in Germany. Using the example of Bavaria, I would like to review these ten years. On January 1st 2008, smoking bans should have been come into force in Bavaria, a Bundesland (state) in the South of Germany. In a quiet backroom politicians and the DEHOGA Bayern, the German Hotel and Restaurant Association, decided on a legislative proposal.  One has to know that the DEHOGA’s member base consists largely of major  hotels and restaurants and that the DEHOGA saw in smoking bans an opportunity to significantly reduce cleaning expenditures of … Continue reading →

Brazil and the lost tolerance

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This text is written in the House Stile, with some pinches of RITE (Redusing Iregularitys in Tradicional English) and Axentus, a system that uses diacritics for english. After more than a decade outside my country, Brazil, i decided to visit it with my partner in the 90s. I told her how brazilians are tolerant – this word has become a loanword for europeans. In Brazil smokers dont have problems, the guest is the king, and if he’s a smoker, he should be allowed to smoke in his house. But i realized that the country had changed when we took a … Continue reading →

Will They Ban Smoking In The Smoky Drinky Bar?

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Smoking bans have driven smokers to the margins of society. And as smoking bans extend to more and more places (e.g. parks, beaches), many smokers are increasingly confined to their own homes (where increasingly they are also being banned from smoking). But thanks to the internet, confinement to one’s own home may be opening up some rather astonishing new social opportunities. Internet social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have already created new kinds of online communities. Facebook and Twitter are essentially text-based social media. But with the rapidly increasing use of fast broadband internet connections, another form of social … Continue reading →