In Switzerland, smoking rooms nearly over the experimental phase

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On one side are coffee tables and oak chairs covered with leather. On the other side, there are Egg armchairs by Arne Jacobsen, a black Bakelite telephone and an old flea market record player. It hardly comes as a surprise that in this era of ever more restrictive smoking laws, when people often have to brave the elements just to take a drag, the Bon Génie would be an instant hit among smokers. Besides offering a roof, which is something smokers already appreciate, it also provides an environment with real style. 

It is not, however, the only such place in Switzerland catering to the needs and tastes of smokers. Several other refined smoking rooms have opened in recent years, including the vast Cigar Lounge at the Schweizerhof Hotel in Bern, which is also inspired by the 1950s post-war style, and the more modern Fish Tank at the Lausanne Palace & Spa, which was refurbished two years ago. These successful examples are leading more and more hotels, such as the Beau Rivage Palace in Lausanne, to also consider smoking lounges. 

“Today’s smoking lounges don’t have anything to do with the old smoky rooms for Havana cigar connoisseurs, or worse yet, the smoking areas in airports,” says Antoine Wasserfallen, a professor at the Hotel School in Lausanne. “They are the result of careful research in design and new technologies.”

Wasserfallen foresees that smoking lounges, still in their experimental phase, will evolve in the near future. “People like smoking lounges. But most of them aren’t profitable enough,” he says. “In some cantons, waited table service is banned, so you have to find solutions to make the sales easier, such as installing a serving hatch,” the expert notes.

This smoking room is the initiative of someone who wanted an alternative to seeing smokers booted out into the cold, and believed that technology would deal with the smell of smoke, which some people find objectionable. They struggle to cope with food service being banned in some smoking rooms – but throughout the UK, this whole arrangement would be illegal, because smoke is so, so poisonous that even the most up-to-date technology can't deal with it.

Heaven forbid that anyone should be allowed to use their skills to address a problem (whether perceived or real) like secondary smoke. Tobacco control and all its friends in government have decreed that their way is the only way and it's not up for discussion. Non-negotiable. You cannot now, or ever, devise a system that will stop smoke from killing people. They have declared it to be impossible, now and for all time. (Flat earthers!)

Someone from the mainstream media called me today about our new petition 01451 (calling for a review of the smoking ban), which addresses this very issue. We know, and have known for some time, that the European Commission has air quality standards and techniques for ventilation, and tobacco smoke is dealt with here. It is absolutely pointless for the authorities to hide any longer behind the mantras, 'there is no safe level of secondary smoke', and 'ventilation doesn't work'.

It is up to those in office to devise systems that will work. Set standards, and if the standards are met there is no problem. If the standards are not met, that is what technology is for. And the technology will clean all the muck. Not just the muck from tobacco smoke, but all the other airborne pollution.

Is it really too much to ask, when humankind has learned to kill by remote control weaponry, to allow the use of technology to enable people to sit and have a drink together?

Can an air quality standard resolve secondary smoke issues?

Earlier this year we discovered an air quality standard that had been published by the European Commission in 2007. Shortly after we used it in this story it disappeared from its website, but we had saved it, and subsequently published it on the Freedom2Choose website.

This link again. A discussion has developed in the comments between supporters and opponents of air-cleaning equipment in pubs. Much of it has to do with the very idea that technology could render a smoking ban quite unnecessary: nothing, say opponents, beats elimination of a contamination source.

The notions that 'there is no safe level of secondary smoke' and 'ventilation doesn't work' run throughout anti-smoking campaigns. Both are nonsensical and they conspire to ensure that eliminating tobacco smoke remains the recommended option.

As far as I can see  technology has moved a long way since noisy and ancient fans offered the best ventilation available to pubs. The situation is different now, as companies have to deal with many air quality problems with a degree of urgency. Air quality in aviation is a case in point. The equipment is sophisticated and designed to remove contaminants for a sustained period (throughout long flights for example). But it already has other uses, and possible further applications are many.

The equipment under discussion is described in the video:



Taking the video entirely at face value (which states that tests are going well and orders are being placed for the system), it would seem that all contaminants within a given air space can be removed. I would expect that systems can be purpose-built for specific buildings (businesses, operating theatres, workshops) according to their size and the kind of activity going on, and that a range of off-the-shelf models will be available to suit a range of needs. I see no reason why it should not work to clear pubs of smoke.

I've supported an air quality standard for as long as I have been aware there was such a thing. It has always made sense to me that people should not be exposed to bad air when they are working – especially when doing hard physical work, when more of it would be inhaled. I simply haven't accepted that smoke does pose a significant risk – the dose makes the poison, and toxins in smoke are extremely weak. But in principle there should be a standard for air, just as there are basic safety standards of other kinds.

So much for the standard. As for the equipment, I really can't see how it is possible to conclude that ventilation engineers will look at the issue of secondary smoke extraction, shake their heads and say, 'No can do'. Can they?