The Smokers Rights Newsletter

Location: Germany
Topic: People Ban

Igniting Europe's smoking revolution

4 Aug 08, 2008

Now that small German pubs can once again allow patrons to light up, Roger Boyes, the Berlin correspondent for British daily The Times, hopes Germany could soon be at the vanguard of Europe’s anti-anti-smoking movement.

Bow-tied Berlin bartender Gregor Scholl is an Anglophile and a committed monarchist. Now however he is being hailed as a revolutionary – part of a group of disgruntled pub’licans who have successfully reversed a key section of Germany's anti-smoking legislation.

A Constitutional Court ruling last week in favour of lighting up in small one-room pubs with no serving staff has torn a hole in the laws. And in Mr Scholl's Rum Trader bar there are only a handful of stools and one virtually has to clamber over the bodies of imbibing politicians and journalists to reach the lavatory.

Could it mark the beginning of a rollback in Europe's campaign against the smoker? I like to think so.

For outsiders it seems a little odd that Germany should be in the vanguard on this issue. Is Germany not the Verboten society where everything is unacceptable? Are not no-nos in Germany so usefully spelled out by signs or lists pinned up in the corridor of your apartment building, or, failing all that, by one’s nosy neighbour?

Yet the truth is it is almost impossible to think of Germany without its curtain of exhaled tobacco. Marlene Dietrich in a smoke-free room? Ludwig Erhard without his cigar? For more than a century the sexiest actors and the sharpest brains have been smokers. A regular column in Die Zeit allows former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to muse about the world for the space of time it takes to puff one of his cigarettes and light up another. He is 89 and perhaps the last champion of the tradition whereby Alpha politicians invariably puffed on phallic pipes.

Under Germany’s new anti-smoking regime, two members of the fire brigade have to stand by in the TV studio as soon as Mr Schmidt so much as reaches for a box of matches. The present Chancellor, Angela Merkel, meanwhile sets an example by nibbling her nails rather than inhaling nicotine. As for the heirs to Marlene Dietrich, the smouldering actresses of the 21st century, they chew gum. Some might call that progress.

Certainly Adolf Hitler would have been happy. One of the biggest surges of research into lung cancer came under the Nazis and he was a militant anti-smoker. Lenin did his bit for the cause too, pioneering the non-smoking train. His fellow Bolsheviks had to stub out their cigarettes when they travelled in sealed carriages from Switzerland to Russia to lead the revolution.

Of course, you do not have to be a nasty dictator to want to ban smoking. Anyone who has spent time in a hospital waiting room knows that lung cancer is a terrible corroding disease. Wheezing patients attached to their mobile oxygen tanks are pitied even by fellow cancer sufferers.

The link between heavy smoking and lung cancer is indisputable. The problem is how to measure the possibly destructive effects of passive smoking and to how to legislate to protect those most at risk. Children are vulnerable, so are pregnant women. So too is the waitress who works ten hours in a closed all-smoking pub. These risks, however, can be minimized by common sense – opening a window, say, or installing an air filter – rather than by passing laws which are difficult to enforce and seek to overturn a whole culture. The serving staff should be informed of the true risks, compensated for discomfort – and allowed to make their own choices. Children should not be allowed in pubs not so much because of the possible danger of breathing in someone else's smoke but because the pub could glamourize alcohol.

But legislating strictly against a majority to protect a small minority is, dare I say it, very German. This is the country remember that scrapped the ultra-modern Transrapid maglev train between Berlin and Hamburg because it could disrupt bird nesting behaviour. A country where autobahns are diverted because they interfere with the migration path of various types of frogs.

Mr Scholl though is not a frog. Neither he nor his cramped customers need an elaborate architecture of legal protection. They are capable of making informed choices. It really is not compulsory to sample his martini cocktails, once extravagantly praised by Ian Fleming, inventor of James Bond, while puffing a cigar. But the practice gives pleasure to many and provides Mr Scholl with a living. Now Germany's top judges have ruled that Mr Scholl and his ilk have a constitutional right to make a living in this way. Customers can go elsewhere if they are unhappy.

And so – although the ruling so far applies only to Berlin and Baden-Württemberg – smokers across Europe are looking to Germany to carry on developing this argument. The balance between protecting the young and the vulnerable on the one hand and slowing down the erosion of constitutional rights on the other is being re-calibrated in of all places Germany.

There is a practical dimension too: if you want to put the young off smoking you do not give cigarettes a kind of underground glamour. For teenagers, smoking has never been so cool – light up and you are defying not only your parents and medical advice but the full weight of the law.

Suddenly every 17-year-old in Berlin seems to have a cigarette hanging from his lips like James Dean. And guess what? James Dean did not die of smoking.
http://www.thelocal.de/13491/

Pete Robinson: Smoking ban victory for German publicans
1 August, 2008
ASH must still be laughing into their Doctor Scholl sandals...
No doubt you will already have read about this news so I won't dwell on the details. Nor will I gloat and beat my chest proclaiming with a roar to the smoking-ban-holocaust-deniers that my observations were correct all along.
Suffice to say German publicans have won a major battle in Germany's highest court that effectively overturns their smoking ban until 2010 - when a small minority of professional antis will have another stab at the issue.
Again I predict they will fail as surely as Gordon Brown in a popularity contest.
But the big question is why can't we achieve something similar here in Blighty, when all we are asking for is a small piece of the fairness and compromise shown in almost every other European country?
The answer is hiding in this line from The Publican's news report of Germany's victory: "The situation differs to that in the UK where a total smoking ban covers all public places, meaning a level playing field for all businesses."
When our Trade leaders SHOULD have been fighting against the ban they fought instead for the 'level playing field' - i.e. the blanket ban. With greedy eyes fixated on bogus figures predicting a surge of new business they gambled everything on the 'new opportunity' and lobbied hard for no exemptions whatsoever, e.g. for members clubs.
In so doing they signed their own death warrant. ASH must still be laughing into their Doctor Scholl sandals.
The result isn't a level playing field at all. It's HALF a field, and shrinking fast. The rest has been handed over on a plate to the supermarkets and cut-priced off-trade. It's been freely awarded to the takeaway industry, like Domino Pizzas who have seen profits surge upwards by 33% since the smoking ban.
What's more the door has now been left open for swathes of new anti-pub legislation and taxation coming from a Government under pressure from the temperance lobby. And all with barely a whisper of opposition from an Industry that's already proved itself to be a complete pushover.
The Trade backed the wrong horse and committed commercial suicide on a catastrophic scale, with the worst yet to be seen. If you think it's hurting now you ain't seen nothin' yet.
Far from admitting their monumental cock-up and changing course these wise men-in-suits steer ever closer to the beconning rocks while their share prices tumble into the basement. They insist it's all YOUR fault, for not mortgaging your wife and kids to convert your pubs into trendy coffee bars bedecked in teak and chrome.
It's not just our Industry leaders either. We are all to blame - for our appalling apathy and blind faith in doing as we're bloody well told. We naively believed New Labour's 2005 manifesto pledges and never saw the blanket ban being slipped in under the radar.
Even during the short window of opportunity for action most of the Trade fell for the calm reassurances that the ban would not affect trade beyond the first four months. We meekly surrendered to the antis without a shot being fired.
Contrast that with Germany, where a series of marches saw over 1,000 publicans at a time marching through major cities. Almost every bar raised petitions signed wholesale by their eager customers. Huge numbers put up a standard wall sign outside declaring - "Rauchen in dieser Kneipe" - This is a smoking pub!
German trade bodies argued the usual dubious statistics and produced their own which stood up to scrutiny. Through the German media politicians were forced to see their ban was highly unpopular and likely to lose them votes.
Yet here we are still doing nothing but hide in our cellars wearing a tin hat, in the forlorn hope that somebody, somewhere will sound the all-clear and things will return to normal.
They won't. I tried to warn from the beginning smokers will NEVER accept the ban. They aren't simply away on a temporary sulk.
They've moved on to a new and cheaper way of socialising that better fits their needs.
Just read the papers, turn on the TV, and look at the message we are sending out. The smoking ban is a huge success warmly embraced throughout the Trade. Two thirds of Licensees think the smoking ban is the best thing since sliced bread and the same number would never overturn it even if they had the power.
Sure, pubs are closing but that's just the credit crunch, innit?
Nothing to do with the smoking ban. Anyway loads of pubs are making a mint now 'cause with all that clean air they attract a better class of customer. We don't want those horrible smokers back, no way.
Have we all gone mad? Allowing ASH to dominate press releases leads to smoking customers believing they are no longer welcome in pubs - and they are blaming you! You might just as well hang a sign above your door saying just that unless you help counter that propaganda.
The Trade has a day of reckoning to come when the carnage of our shrinking pub stock becomes too great to bear. At that time we will be forced to confront the truth head on, although it may well be too late.
Meantime I watch in despair as our Industry busily stokes it's own funeral pyre.
http://www.thepublican.com/story.asp?sectioncode=16&storycode=60681&c=3

German smoke ban to be partially overturned, court rules
30 July, 2008
By James Wilmore
Small pubs to be permitted to allow smoking
Germany is to be forced to reverse its ban on smoking in small pubs, the country’s top constitutional court has ruled.
The court said a ban on smoking in small one-room bars in two states – Berlin and Baden-Wuttermberg – was discriminatory as similar pubs that had extra rooms were legally allowed to offer one for smokers.
The situation differs to that in the UK where a total smoking ban covers all public places, meaning a level playing field for all businesses.
Smokers should also be permitted to light up in one-room venues, the court said.
The ruling is likely to set a precedent for other German states.
In an emailed statement, the court said: “Lawmakers could totally ban smoking in all bars and restaurants. But if they decide to allow exceptions for some barkeepers, then these exceptions must also apply to small pubs which are most hit by the ban.''
The ruling upheld a complaint lodged by the owners of two small bars in Berlin and a disco operator in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, who argued the ban had cut their revenues by more than 30 per cent.
Hans-Juergen Papier, the court's president, said the law would need to be redrawn by the end of next year.
He said until then, smoking should be permitted in bars and restaurants of less than 75 square metres that lack a separate smokers' area.
About one third of Germans smoke, which is one of the highest rates in Europe.
http://www.thepublican.com/story.asp?storycode=60652

German court overturns partial smoking ban
By Nicholas Kulish

July 30, 2008

BERLIN: It is safe once more to take a drag at Berlin's corner bars, legally speaking if not for your health.

The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe announced Wednesday that it had found regional smoking bans in the German states of Berlin and Baden-Württemberg to be unconstitutional.

The court ruled that by allowing large establishments to maintain separate smoking areas, the bans discriminated against small, one-room locales, such as the "Eckkneipen," or corner pub, as local bars are known here.

As a result, patrons in bars smaller than 75 square meters, or 800 square feet, in the two states could immediately light up for a smoke.

After the ruling, which had been highly anticipated and was broadcast live on German television, representatives from several other German states issued statements saying they would examine their own laws and adapt them to comply with the ruling.

The decision was a rare victory for smokers in what had seemed like an inexorable march toward a complete end to smoking in bars in Europe, with bans already in place in Italy, the United Kingdom, France and beyond.

But that success also may be short-lived. Anti-smoking forces also claimed victory, lauding the highest court's ruling for supporting the legality of a more complete ban.

"Indeed, lawmakers would not be prevented from imposing a strict smoking ban, without exceptions" in bars and restaurants, the court said in a statement Wednesday. The court gave lawmakers until Dec. 31, 2009, to rewrite the laws.

Most German states instituted smoking bans at the beginning of the year, but with a variety of different exceptions, like beer tents in Bavaria, home to Oktoberfest. Newspapers in eastern regions carried stories at the start of the year about smokers fleeing for their evening drinks to Polish pubs, where smoking was still permitted.

But in the eyes of many residents here, the smoking ban had turned into a David and Goliath narrative for local business owners, pitting bigger bars capable of supporting separate smoking rooms against the smaller ones that could not.

"I think it's super, because it gives the little bars a chance to survive against the larger ones," said Nelli Böhm, a university student who was in favor of the ruling, despite the fact that she is a nonsmoker.

Enforcement in the capital was lax at best, leading to spats between smokers and nonsmokers, as locales ran the gamut from condoning the habit to tolerating it to, in rare cases, encouraging civil disobedience.

A small bar known as Doors, in the gentrified but still bohemian neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, was one of three establishments that successfully challenged the ban.

"Smokers should also have a chance to commit their sins indoors," said Steffen Mensching, a writer and former smoker who said he had visited Doors on occasion and supported the fight to overturn of the ban. "If cigarettes are so bad, the government should forbid them entirely instead of making money by taxing them."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/30/europe/german.php

German court partially overturns smoking ban
BERLIN (AP) - Germany's high court says smoking bans in two states are unconstitutional. The decision forces most state governments to review their own prohibitions.
The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe on Wednesday ruled on appeals brought by the owners of one-room pubs in the states of Baden Wuerttemberg and Berlin.
Most states currently allow larger establishments to have smoking rooms, but the court ruled that this discriminates against the single-room pubs which can't offer smoking areas.
The court says either states have to eliminate smoking entirely in all establishments or change their rules regarding the smaller pubs.
It gives state parliaments until the end of next year to come up with new laws.
2008-07-30

Bans up
Jul 24th 2008 | BERLIN
From The Economist print edition
The constitutional court is to rule on the legality of German smoking bans
“DON’T WALK” signals hypnotise German pedestrians even when no car is in sight. No smoking laws are another matter. By July 1st all of Germany’s 16 states had banned smoking in bars, restaurants and discos (though most allow it in separate rooms). But plenty of smokers still light up. “Beer goes with cigarettes and cigarettes with beer,” says a bartender at Köpi bei Reiner, in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, where ashtrays fill up despite a smoking ban. Innkeepers think the bans themselves are illegal, and have fired a fusillade of legal challenges. On July 30th they expect a verdict from the most senior tribunal: the constitutional court.
The constitutional rights to property and to exercise one’s profession are at stake, claim the plaintiffs, who want smoking bans eased for some 60,000 one-room establishments. The German Hotel and Restaurant Association says smoking bans have cost small bars and restaurants 30% of their revenues. That shakes a pillar of social life: the Stammtisch, a regulars’ table at the corner bar where fellowship is forged. If people cannot smoke at Köpi, says its bartender, “we would lose our regulars”.
Anti-smoking campaigners have long found Germany a hard case. Last year the Swiss Cancer League ranked the tobacco-fighting zeal of 30 European countries, and placed Germany 27th. The new smoking bans might improve its ranking, but they are riddled with 130 exemptions, complains Martina Pötschke-Langer, of the German Cancer Research Centre. Bavaria enacted Germany’s toughest ban, banishing cigarettes even from separate rooms, but it lets bars become private “clubs” and their patrons turn into “members”. After voters gave the ruling Christian Social Union a drubbing in a local election in March, the state government said this year’s Oktoberfest could be as smoky as ever.
Smoking foes detect the hand of the tobacco lobby. That is hard to prove, although cigarette ladies are a fixture at political parties’ conventions. Germany has conducted no large-scale campaign on the dangers of passive smoking, says Dr Pötschke-Langer. Despite boosting taxes recently, cigarettes are still cheaper than in Britain and Ireland. The share of the adult population that smokes has dropped from more than half in 1950 to around a third, but smoking rates remain among the highest in Europe.
Dr Pötschke-Langer thinks German innkeepers should embrace the “shift away from stinky and dark bars”. Bartenders retort that they and their customers should be free to choose stinkiness. After the constitutional court decides, it will turn to lighter fare: a ruling on the European Union’s Lisbon treaty.
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11792356

European Court rejects in the name of the EU commission an indemnity because of "passive smoking" to the widow of a 29 yrs long EU employee
April, 2008
http://curia.europa.eu/de/transitpage.htm

KEEP ON PUFFIN'
Smoking Bans in Germany Slowly Eroding
March 28, 2008
Saxony and Saarland became the latest German states to water down new smoking bans this week. As other European nations push smokers outside, German states seem willing to let them keep lighting up.
The list just keeps on growing. Later this year, Switzerland will become the most recent addition to the club of European countries that have banned smoking in public places. A European culture famous for its eagerness to light up is increasingly having to crush out its butts on the sidewalk.
But Germany seems to be moving the exact opposite direction these days. Since January, when the list of states with smoking bans jumped to 11 out of 16, three have now taken significant steps backward.
The most recent to reconsider controlling the cancer sticks was the eastern German state of Saxony. Courts on Thursday decided that single-room bars and restaurants were being unfairly disadvantaged by the rules, which mandated that smokers be isolated in a separate room. The owners of smaller restaurants and bars argued in court that this was unfair to businesses that did not have space to cordon off smokers from non-smokers. Groups who lobbied to relax the ban claim that between 75 and 95 percent of the state's bar and restaurant patrons are smokers.
But just as the anti-smoking trend in Europe is gaining steam, so too is the anti-anti-smoking trend in Germany. A court in Rheinland-Palatinate in February made a ruling similar to the Saxony verdict, the first such gutting of a state-imposed anti-smoking law. (Smoking regulations are the province of the states in federalized Germany.)
Also this week, a court in the south-western state of Saarland ruled that smoking could continue in hookah bars. Those establishments, the court argued, depend almost exclusively on customers who come just to smoke water pipes.
Bavaria, which introduced the strictest ban in January, also recently relaxed its new non-smoking rules. Politicians from the ruling Christian Social Union (CSU) decided to allow smoking in festival tents -- thereby saving the scores of smokers who descend on Munich during Oktoberfest.
Günther Beckstein, the governor of Bavaria, announced the exception earlier this month, and said that the tents will stay smoker-friendly at least until 2009. Many of the CSU's top politicians had blamed the state's strict smoking ban on the party's poor showing in recent local elections.
Each recent decision to weaken local smoking bans was applauded by service industry representatives, like the German Hotel and Restaurant Association (Dehoga). The association recently released a report claiming that 58 percent of their member establishments in Baden-Württemberg and Lower Saxony -- both states that introduced smoking bans in January -- have seen a sharp drop in business in 2008.
German cancer researchers, meanwhile, find the weakened bans discouraging. Otmar Wiestler, leader of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) told the Associated Press said that the exemptions would be particularly harmful to the health of the roughly one million Germans employed at restaurants and bars.
"We are miles away from implementing comprehensive protection for non-smokers," said Wiestler.
Klaus Stern, a law professor in Cologne said that a trend of state courts making partial exceptions to local legislative decisions was a sign of bureaucratic inefficiency.
"This hodge-podge (of decisions) cries out for a nationwide ruling," he said.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,544005,00.html

Germany Deals with New Smoking Regulations

by Kyle James

February 12, 2008 · Until recently, Germany was one of Western Europe's last bastions for smokers. While bans went into place in the U.K., Spain, Italy and Ireland, Germans continued to light up in restaurants and bars.

But now, that's changed. Germany's federal states have been introducing wide-ranging smoking bans, and they're not sitting well with many.

Some don't like the government trying to change their behavior. Others say traditional bars could become a thing of the past.

Finding Other Approaches

Some, like Barbara Palm, are just changing the way they do things.

To get into Palm's small neighborhood bar in Berlin these days, you have to ring the doorbell.

Locking the front door is the way she's getting around Berlin's ban on smoking in public spaces, which now includes bars and restaurants. It went into effect Jan. 1. She calls her establishment a private Smokers' Club now, and hands people a membership ticket when they come in.

Inside, almost everyone has a cigarette in hand, and the air is thick with smoke.

"Ninety-five percent of my guests are smokers, and I live off them," Palm says. "With this law, the government is taking away our livelihoods. If I just have 5 percent of my guests left — the nonsmokers — I can't even pay my rent."

Meeting Resistance

Germany's smoking bans have hit some fierce resistance. Maybe that's surprising in a country not exactly averse to rules and regulations.

Leading the fight are the owners of small, traditional bars where regulars gather for cheap beer and gossip, accompanied by a lot of nicotine. Many owners say they don't have the financial means, or the space, to create a separate room for smokers.

Uli Neu has owned his bar in Tübingen, in southwest Germany, for 22 years. His state, Baden-Württemberg, introduced the smoking ban last August, and he says since then he's watched sales fall by 35 percent.

Helped by Germany's bar and restaurant association, he has filed a suit with the nation's highest court, hoping to get the law changed.

"I hope that they make an exception to the rule," Neu says, "so that small bars, the classic corner bars that live off of drink sales, can decide on their own to be smoking or nonsmoking."

Berlin Easing In

Back in Berlin, bars are deciding on their own, at least for now.

Perhaps because the city is considered home to the best nightlife in Europe, Berliners are being eased into the new, cleaner air. Although it's technically illegal to light up in bars, the city won't start imposing fines for it until summer.

Simon Stettner says — while puffing away — that places with ashtrays still out are doing a booming business.

"There's one bar where it's allowed to smoke, and normally it's a little ugly bar and was not very well visited — but right now it's full of people," Stettner says.

Implementation of State Regulations

If it sounds confusing in Berlin, it's actually pretty confusing all over Germany.

The ban wasn't passed on the federal level, so it's a patchwork of differing state regulations. Smoking in bars and restaurants is prohibited across the board. But if you want to light up in a festival tent at Cologne's carnival, no problem. Still, you better put it out at Munich's Oktoberfest, or you'll face a fine.

Bernd Hieber manages a Mexican restaurant in the southern city of Stuttgart, which has had a ban in place for half a year now. He understands that some people, especially bar owners, are angry and worried.

There were similar fears when smoking bans were introduced in other countries. But their experience gives him reason for hope.

"Countries like Ireland, or Scotland, the first one or two years, this is a time of struggling, but then in the longer run, things seem to be that the people accept it," Hieber says.

But, he adds, with business at small bars falling off so dramatically right after the ban's introduction, it's uncertain whether some will still be around if the customers start coming back.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18696151&ft=1&f=1004

German State Court Suspends Smoking Ban for Single-Room Pubs

By Patrick Donahue

Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- A court in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate suspended a smoking ban in single-room pubs after a group of bar owners complained that their inability to designate smoking areas may put them out of business.

Single-room bar owners without employees can ignore the ban scheduled to take effect on Feb. 15 until a final ruling, the Constitutional Court of Rhineland-Palatinate in Koblenz said in a ruling posted on its Web site. The bars in the meantime will have to post a sign designating them as smoking bars.

The smoking ban, passed by the state assembly in Mainz on Oct. 5, allows bars and restaurants to designate smoking areas that are sufficiently closed off. Five one-room bar owners filed a complaint, claiming that they were being discriminated against because they were unable to block off a room.

The court accepted the complainants' assertion that, since some 80 percent of their clientele were smokers, the prospect of a smoke-free pub could destroy their businesses.

The state court rejected a complaint brought by a smoker that the ban impinges on his personal liberty and unfairly targets tobacco consumption and not alcohol and air pollution.

Eleven of Germany's 16 states enacted smoking bans in hotels, bars and restaurants at the beginning of the year.

The cases are VGH A 32/07, 1/08, 4/08, 7/08, 10/08, 12/08.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aiQjKO53pWpA&refer=germany

Here more links:

Germany's constitutional court gives right to the 5 bar owners who went to court in Coblence, Rheinland-Pfalz:, and partly stops the ban that should have been enforced on this Friday.

German:

http://www.orf.at/080212-21680/index.html

Here with the name of the bar owner who won (for contact and google)

http://www.express.de/servlet/Satellite?pagename=express/index&pageid=1004979498952&rubrikid=220&ressortid=104&articleid=1200128998915

French (translation of orf.at article):

http://raucherbewegung.eu/smokersforum/forumdisplay.php?fid=5

Austria is following due to that judgment:

german:

http://www.oe24.at/zeitung/oesterreich/politik/article233631.ece

Italian court had already given right to the bar owners in 2005; The bar owners are not forced to enforce the ban; so they cannot be fined either:

english

http://www.raucherbewegung.eu/files/GB_Legal_IT.pdf

Germans puff on as smoking ban fizzles
Jan 15, 2008
By Sarah Roberts
BERLIN (Reuters) - Photographer Frank Blum puffed contentedly on a hand-rolled cigarette in a cafe in central Berlin, blatantly ignoring a ban that went into effect in most of Germany this month.
"I'm smoking because no one's stopping me," Blum, 43, said from behind his laptop, one of a dozen customers happily smoking without fear. "The cafes aren't making it difficult."
Blum is just one of many disobeying a law banning smoking in public places -- cafes, bars, restaurants and night clubs -- in force in Berlin and 11 other German states from January 1.
"My friends and I only go to places that let us smoke," said Lena Reuster, a 24-year-old economics student surrounded by a cloud of her own smoke. "When we go out we want our beer and cigarettes. It doesn't really matter until July."
The changes left only four of Germany's 16 states -- Saxony, Rheinland-Palatinate, Saarland and Thuringia -- with no ban. However, they plan to become smoke-free by July.
In the city-state of Berlin, the non-smoking bill issued by the Department of Health and Consumer Protection made police and proprietors responsible for enforcing the ban. They face fines up to 1,000 euros ($1,500) for violations.
Anyone now lighting up inside a public place is, in theory, risking a 100-euro fine, even though Berlin decided not to collect any fines until after a six-month transition period.
Berlin police have not responded to complaints about renegade smokers and are by and large letting cafe and bar owners decide whether customers can smoke or not.
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSL1421202620080115