Smoking: Sensible Germans

At least he's still going strong!
Image source: here

Common sense has prevailed in Germany - or at least parts of it - this follows a court ruling in Berlin today:

"The state of Saxony introduced a ban on smoking in bars, restaurants and discos on Feb. 1 — following several other states in introducing restrictions. It allowed owners to set aside separate rooms for smokers.

Several owners of single-room bars complained to the state's constitutional court.

They complained that, because they were unable to provide a smoking room, "their smoking regular customers — who made up 75 to 95 percent of their customers — had largely stayed away" since the law took effect, a court statement said.

The court ordered that one-room bars be exempt pending a decision on the merits of owners' case against the new law. It said that they might otherwise suffer "serious losses that could not be made up" if their case is successful."

Note that the extract from this article in the IHT states that already it was permitted to have rooms allocated for smokers.

What is it about Germany that makes its system so fair and sensible in comparison with Eire, the UK, France and Italy?

Soon perhaps we will remember this day as one when we discovered that there was at least one democratic country left in the EU.

Until the next time