New Zealand stubs out smoking in bars, restaurants

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New Zealanders breathed a little more easily on Friday, although smokers grumbled, as it became the third country in the world to ban smoking in bars and restaurants.

The South Pacific nation, which sells itself to the world as ‘clean and green’, followed Norway, Ireland and a host of cities in the United States in banning smoking in licensed premises to reduce exposure to secondhand smoke.

"It’s one of the last bastions, smoking at the pub,” said Greg Argent, a smoker for 24 years.

“It won’t make me give up. If anything it’ll make me more determined - big brother telling me what to do,” he told Reuters, braving rain and wind outside Wellington’s Syn Bar as his non-smoking friends sat in comfort indoors.

Some bar owners have readily accepted the new law, but others have gone to some lengths to get around the ban.

One country pub owner is converting a truck and trailer used to transport livestock for his smoking patrons, parking it outside his premises and covering it with some “tasteful” sail material. Inner city hotels have created “courtyards” by cutting holes in walls and roofs.

The prospect of millions more butts ending up in city streets has prompted authorities in Auckland, the country’s biggest city, to give away free pocket-sized butt containers.

The new law extends a 1990 ban on smoking in offices, shops and public buildings to pubs, clubs, restaurants, casinos and school grounds, as well limiting the display of tobacco products in shops.

Opponents, including some waiters and bar staff, have complained loudly about the risk of drink-tampering, increased noise and crowding on pavements, loss of freedom, and the death of the country pub.

But supporters have been no less passionate, extolling the virtues of clean air and healthy workplaces.

“It’s fantastic that New Zealanders can now enjoy a drink in a bar and go home without smelling like an ashtray,” Green Party Health spokeswoman Sue Kedgley said.

Under the new law, bar and restaurant owners are liable to fines of up to NZ$400 ($286) if they do not take reasonable steps to stop people smoking indoors.

But health officials are relying more on peer pressure to enforce the law. A handful of officials will follow up complaints, during office hours, rather than troll the country’s bars in search of wayward smokers.

The hotel industry was generally resigned to, but did not want, the new rules.

The Chief Executive of the Hospitality Association, Bruce Robertson, said one study suggested businesses could have lost between 20 and 40 percent of their income under initial proposed changes to the bill.

“Certainly the information we have from our colleagues in Ireland is that results will be mixed, and we came to the view that those operators who embraced it and tried to make it work would have less economic harm than those that did not do so,” Robertson told Reuters.

New Zealand also hopes the ban will have the spinoff of getting people to quit. About a quarter of adults smoke, well above a World Health Organization goal of 20 percent, but little changed from the number who were smoking at the time of the original ban in 1990.

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