Germany’s Smoking Ban Evokes The Health Nazis
“’NAZI’ claim as Germans rebel over smoking ban,” says the Observer.
“Outrage greets change to the law - and drinkers forced to cross the border.”
Smoking in enclosed paces is now verboten in Germany. So the German smokers are on the move, journeying not to France (where a smoking ban persists) but to Poland, historically an intrepid German’s first port of call on any freewheeling European adventure.
It is all too easy to hark back to those dark days, to mention the war. But this talk of Nazis is intoxicating for the Observer. How have Germans reacted to the tobacco ban?
In Berlin’s Vienna Bar, Gerhard Grünberg is showing off his bruises, a victim of “bar rage”. He shares his anecdote. A man is smoking. He asks the man to step outside and partake of the air warmed by heaters, the blankets and sofa. Says Grunberg: “’But the man said I was taking away his rights, and then he threw the punch.”
Violence in Germany. And as the papers notes: “Under the supervision of the Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research, the ban was imposed in every public building and public space, including air-raid shelters, with Hitler even personally intervening in 1944 to ensure it was extended to trains and buses in order to protect young female conductors.”
And: “It was even pointed out that Hitler, Mussolini and Franco were all non-smokers, while the ‘evil enemies’ - Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin - all enjoyed a tobacco fix.”
But it is the UK that bans smoking in all enclosed public places. In Germany, smokers can indulge their habit in establishments with separate rooms. The Observer say this is a “quirk”.
It’s not. It’s a fact. Modern Germany is more tolerant than the UK…
January 20th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Many of the European bans allow some exemptions and indoor smoking rooms,If we allowed this in the UK it might save some of the 5000 pubs,clubs and bingo halls that will close in the next two years and smokers would not feel like social outcasts and second class citizens.
January 20th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Health Nazis
January 21st, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Dear Editor
Mr. Nealon,
Can you tell me why the global news industry is refusing to report that many researchers, scientists, even doctors and politicians, do NOT believe the anti-smoking claims about Second Hand Tobacco Smoke.
Refusing to also report this information along with the junk science claims by anti-smokers is a failure and violation of the News Industry’s Fiduciary Duty to the reading public, as well as a violation of smokers’ Freedom of Speech Constitutional Right.
There has never been a study proving that exposure to smoke kills or harms anyone.
Smoking bans dramatically increase the dehumanization of smokers, increase the hatred of smokers, falsely convicts smokers as murderers without due process of law, violating constitutional rights, and unjustifiably undermines and destroys the smoker’s family, friends, and work relationships.
Bans for Apt, Condo, and Single Dwelling Private Homes is going to herd smokers who cannot get places to live, let alone jobs, in to Ghettos — because we smoke criminally taxed legal tobacco.
What’s happening to us is indisputably Discrimination and Persecution. Soon will come forced treatment programs, Internment Camps, and drive-by executions of smokers.
Let this happen, and ask yourself - who will be next ? Will anybody stand up for your rights when ‘they’ come after you ?
Steve Hartwell, Toronto, Canada. http://www.ventilatedsmokingrooms.ca
February 8th, 2008 at 7:52 am
I’m glad that many Germans can still tell a Nazi when they see one. Too bad most people in the U.S. can’t.
When California banned smoking in bars a little over ten years ago, I thought, Uh-oh. We’ve lost all sense of proportion and fair play now. From California to the U.S., and from the U.S. to the rest of the world. I knew that sick, fascist trend would spread like wildfire, and I said the overweight would be next. Most people laughed.
It turned out I was right, but I’m not laughing about it.
Nothing would make me happier than to see the rest of the world tell the fascist police state the U.S. has become to mind its own business. I see the WHO has just launched a new anti-tobacco campaign this very day. It needs a good slapping-down as well.
All those American World War II vets must be spinning in their graves. They thought they were making the world safe for freedom. It turned out they were only empowering the next big wave of pure evil.
Government always responds to those who want greater control over the individual, no matter what that control happens to be. But if you’ll notice, government does not listen to those of us who want less control over our lives and private businesses.
Isn’t that funny?
March 9th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
What a violation, not only am I victim of the general smoking ban in England, but I am not allowed to smoke during my working day, come 1st April 2008. Well done to the Germans for protesting more wholeheartedly than us English !!!
May 29th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Do you smokers realise how pathetic you all sound? Its about time us non smokers were allowed to go out for a night without coming home stinking of the by-product of your vile habit. You know you are harming your own health (OK so you will say you have the right to do so) but how stupid is that? Get a grip!
July 31st, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Shock, horror…….since the smoking ban came in, has anyone noticed the price of everything has risen. Could this be something to do with the amount of people quitting due to the ban, coincidence, maybe. As for a breath of fresh air’s comment, I agree to a point, funnily enough, when I nip outside for a ciggie, the amount of non smokers are outside participating in the conversations but why can’t smokers have pubs/ ajoining rooms wherupon non smokers would be more than welcome. The Germans probably realise that their government works for them, not the other way around.