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Restaurateurs see total smoking ban as too harsh

by Alina Lobzina at 12/05/2012 14: 04

Moscow restaurants and bar owners believe a smoking ban proposed by the city authorities to be an excessive measure, according to an online poll.

The ban is to come in force in either 2013 or 2014, according to a proposal published by the city economic and development department at the beginning of the month.

“If these initiatives are adopted, we are law obedient folks and of course we will implement this rule, but for our part, we say that this decision is premature, ” Igor Bukharov, head of the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers, told news agency Prime, which carried out the poll.

The program, which is being considered by the city authorities, is aimed to gradually drive out smokers from all public places in Moscow.

But restaurant and bar owners might be the ones to pay for the clean air, according to Bukharov, as the proposed plan might fuel corruption.

“Who will guarantee that a local policeman won’t come and fine your restaurant as soon as one of the guests makes an order and light up a cigarette? ” he said. Bukharov also added that it would be reasonable to penalise smokers, and not restaurateurs.

The Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers has submitted some ideas based on Europe’s experience in combating smoking, but Moscow’s harsh climate would make it difficult to adopt them, Bukharov said.

Alexander Krylov, general managing partner at RP-Com which owns several restaurant chains, believes that the smoking ban won’t force smokers to kick their habit. “This measure is not a tool to fight smoking in general, ” he told RIA Novosti.

Statistical data and personal experience, however, proves otherwise. “When this law was introduced in the UK, the difference was startling, and many of my friends who smoked cut down and stopped, because suddenly it was very inconvenient, ” Muscovite Olga Kovalchuk who returned to Moscow from London three years ago, told the Moscow News.

A recent European study found out that after smoking in public places was restricted, a considerable number of smokers voluntarily banned smoking in their homes.

The number of such cases grew by 25 percent in Ireland, 17 percent, 38 percent and 28 percent in France, Germany and the Netherlands respectively, according to the research published in Tobacco Control journal earlier this year.

Article 7

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