Ireland Leads the World by Going Smoke-Free

Ireland became the first country in the world to outlaw cigarettes in all its restaurants and pubs Monday, to the delight of non-smokers but the dismay of some publicans who say they will have to police the ban.

Ireland became the first country in the world to outlaw cigarettes in all its restaurants and pubs Monday, to the delight of non-smokers but the dismay of some publicans who say they will have to police the ban.From midnight Sunday it became illegal to smoke in virtually all workplaces, closed public spaces and on public transport, with fines of up to 3,000 euros ($3,825) for transgressors. While similar bans have been imposed in cities and states elsewhere in the world, including in California and New York, Ireland is the first country to impose such a ban nationally. “I am confident that this measure will provide a health legacy, not just for current but also for future generations who thankfully will never know what it was like to work in an enclosed smoke-filled environment,” Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said as the ban started. Opinion polls have consistently shown that most people in Ireland support the move, and the government says that even 40 percent of the country’s smokers are behind it. Some smokers have had March 29 pencilled in their diaries for months as the day they will give up a habit which costs some 7,000 lives in Ireland each year. But others say the ban is ill-conceived and unenforceable. The Vintners’ Federation of Ireland (VFI), which represents some 6,000 publicans across the country, says it is unfair to expect its members to police the ban. Pub owners will have to confront defiant smokers who, perhaps emboldened by drink, refuse to heed the “no smoking” signs plastered across the walls of their pubs, they say. Other critics say the ban is another example of the state meddling in the private affairs of its citizens. One woman e-mailed national broadcaster RTE Monday morning to say she was wearing black to mark “the first day of dictatorship in Ireland.””For me personally, it’s a bridge too far,” smoker Shay Mahoney told Reuters as the ban came into force. “I mean, what’s next, compulsory haircuts?” asked Mahoney, who said he has smoked 20 cigarettes a day for the past 20 years but did not think the landlord at his local pub in north Dublin would enforce the ban. But anti-smoking lobby group ASH has congratulated the Irish government on pushing through legislation which may soon be introduced elsewhere in Europe. Norway is set to impose a similar ban in June and European Union health commissioner David Byrne, who is Irish, has said he would like to see the experiment mirrored across the bloc. Michael O’Shea, Chief Executive of the Irish Heart Foundation, says he hopes the ban will herald a new era for Irish society — “an era when health is set as a priority over other interests.” (Source: Reuters Health News: Gideon Long: March 2004)