Along with the summer days, times have suddenly sunk into the past when lovers of a cigarette or two could freely do so in railway station squares, government offices, restaurants, or taxis. From now on, 'smoking compartments' in trains and electric trains disappear, small nooks in restaurants set aside for those wishing to smoke are abolished, and government institutions and schools switch to No smoking mode: here even in toilets you can no longer puff a cigarette.
The German Health Minister Ulla Schmidt and the head of the German state railway company Deutsche Bahn AG, Hartmut Mehdorn, made an inspection tour of several stations and long-distance trains the day before to see for themselves that the barriers to smoking passengers are indeed reliable. Ulla Schmidt stated in this regard that she is very pleased with Deutsche Bahn's joining the state anti-smoking program (as if the state-owned company had any choice!), and Hartmut Mehdorn said literally the following: 'It is not our task to look for loopholes that smokers may find on trains. We rely on their awareness and commitment to the law.'
For unaware passengers who still decide to light up, the law provides for quite substantial fines – their amounts are three-digit numbers. The same rules apply to those caught in the act of smoking in public places, government institutions, and restaurants. Some leniency is made only for minors: if, for example, a teenager lights up in a café, it is not him who will be punished, but the owner of the establishment who allowed such a flagrant violation of the law. Moreover, the fine that threatens him is calculated not even in hundreds, but in thousands of euros. By the way, a minor resident of Germany now has no more right to buy a pack of cigarettes than to buy a bottle of vodka.
Nevertheless, an experiment conducted on September 1 by journalists of the ARD television channel demonstrated that 'what is written with a pen' can simply be ignored. The 16-year-old daughter of one of the TV reporters, at the request of the film crew, walked through one of the Berlin shopping centers, stopping by ten kiosks selling tobacco products along the way. In seven of them, she bought a pack of cigarettes without the slightest problem – not a single question was asked, no identification was required. In three kiosks, the girl was disciplinedly refused. When the reporters asked the guilty sellers how they dared to break the law, they simply pleaded ignorance. Like, they had never heard of such a thing. However, as is known, ignorance of the law does not exempt from liability, so if the police had been in place of the reporters, the kiosk owners would have had to pay up.
But there is another, even simpler way for minors to buy cigarettes. As experience shows, fighting it is simply useless. These are Chinese and Vietnamese sellers of contraband smokes. Year after year, the police triumphantly report the seizure of large, very large, and even larger batches of 'burned' cigarettes, about raids on smugglers... And to this day, in any large city in Germany, sellers of such goods can be seen literally at every step. They are absolutely not interested in the age of buyers: as long as there is money, even a baby in a stroller can buy a pack of 'two-humped camel'.
So in one point, the new law can definitely be considered a waste of paper: it will only lead to an increase in the income of the 'tobacco mafia'. Again, tobacco vending machines are not uncommon in any locality, and owners promise to switch them to a new, 'adult' mode of operation only by the end of 2009.
In the meantime, the new rules have caused considerable indignation among the country's population. Many private taxi drivers are already stating that they don't care about federal lawmaking: they are the masters of their own car interiors and no federal official can forbid them from doing what they want there. Some taxis have signs: 'Smoking here!', similar announcements can be seen in the windows of many restaurants.
But German smokers are particularly outraged. They have long felt like hunted game in their own country: tobacco prices are steadily rising, and on cigarette packs, according to European legislation, catchy phrases assail them. There is no talk of a modest 'Ministry of Health warns', anti-nicotine posters are very specific in their predictions: 'Smokers die of cancer!' 'And now connoisseurs of a good cigarette have been driven almost underground,' complains Detlef Schneider, head of the recently created 'German Smokers' League'. Members of his small but active organization intend to file a lawsuit against the federal government in the German Constitutional Court: they believe the new law infringes on their civil rights. 'If the government so wants to fight smoking, it would better start with large tobacco corporations, ban them from hanging their posters on the streets and public transport stops,' says Schneider. 'But fighting transnational corporations is beyond them. It's easier to issue another meaningless law and drill a hole in a jacket for a medal.'
Boris ALTNER.
IA Rosbalt