Thursday 26 May 2011

Pressure grows for a federal smoking ban in Germany

A cross-party parliamentary group in Germany is pushing for a federal law to supersede state laws on public smoking in Germany. State laws have provided a number of different bans that are poorly enforced. An attempt to impose a nation-wide ban in 2007 failed.

The report, using a Yougov poll, remarks that 'the tide may be turning against smokers'. But Yougov's director Peter Kellner doesn't pretend to impartiality on this issue. The Yougov poll declares 65 per cent of smokers in favour of an outright ban on smoking in enclosed public places throughout Germany.

It doesn't help to explain why the smokers in many states have not complied with the ban, nor does the report offer any reason to suggest that they will change their minds, just because a parliamentary group is embarrassed about Germany's failure to go non-smoking in pubs and restaurants. The best they can offer is that 'public opinion' will force smokers (and the licensed trade and the courts that have supported them in the past) to concede.

Germany has another reason not to like anti-smoking campaigns.

3 comments:

Smoking Hot said...

YouGov? ... oh please. Here's the result l want, now give me poll results to show it.

Anonymous said...

I can find no trace of this poll, either using Google or on the YouGov website. For future reference, YouGov is a member of the British Polling Council and, as such, is obliged to divulge the wording of every question posed in its polls: something it didn't do when carrying out a series of polls for ASH UK on the success of the smoking ban. If you can't find the details of a YouGov poll on its website, email the BPC.

Anonymous said...

The tide isn't turning "against smokers". The tide is turning against human beings and all remaining small shreds of basic property rights and basic liberties, until there will be none left. Evil always comes riding in on a white horse called "goodness" and the deception makes it so otherwise good people go insane and condone what is eventually their own undoing. How many people cheering Hitler and Mussolini early on and with vigor would have believed only years later the entire world around them would be lying in death and ruin. With anti-smoking, it's the same thing and the population is suckered into it, willing accomplices.