Thanks to a couple of pro-property rights court rulings and unified resistance to the national smoking ban, Dutch bar and cafe owners have successfully fought back against the intrusive law. J. D. Tuccille explains:
The key to the apparent victory appears to be cooperation. Bars and cafes across the country coordinated their defiance of the smoking ban after business dropped by as much as 30% in the wake of the law’s passage. To lure back customers who wanted cigarettes with their drinks, bars put the ashtrays back on the tables.
First-hand accounts even had bar patrons using table-top candle holders for their ashes in establishments that didn;t want tomake their defiance too obvious.
The Dutch government fined hundreds of establishments, but couldn’t break the back of the resistance.
The law suffered perhaps fatal setbacks when courts ruled that the the government had no authority to impose total bans on small establishments that had no staff when it let larger businesses designate smoking areas. Another court ruled in favor of a bar owner who designated a store room as the (non-smoking) bar and the rest of the establishment as a smoking area.
Now, Dutch bar and cafe owners are free — at least for the time being — to establish rules that attract customers and suit their businesses.
Unfortunately, courts in the US haven’t been nearly as willing to protect the property rights of bar owners, making such civil disobedience less likely to pay off here.
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Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
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What about the people who work at the bars and are consistently poisoned?
For the general patron, is it really that unreasonable to ask to not be denied to an establishment out of a wish to not get lung cancer?
Urg. We’ve had smoking bans rolling across our province for the past 10 years. Every time, bar owners make doom like statements of how they’re going to go out of business. And every time, it never happens.
Second hand smoke still doesn’t have valid science as to a negative affect, If they want to save lives, they could stop war, that’d save a lot more than getting rid of smoking would.
For bars like this they clearly want to be allowed to smoke there. Why do the non-smokers feel such an urge to tell them how to live? Where do they get the right to tell other people what is ok to do in their lives?