A Dutch court yesterday upheld an appeal by anti-cigarette campaigners by disallowing a tobacco-smoking-ban exemption that had allowed separate smoking areas to be set up in cafés and bars, according to a MedicalXpress story.
A general ban on smoking in restaurants, pubs and bars was introduced in the Netherlands in 2008, but, under the exemption, cafes smaller than 70 square metres (753 square feet) were allowed to set aside areas for smokers behind floor-to-ceiling glass partitions.
These areas had to be less-attractively decorated than the rest of the café, and no food or drink could be served inside.
Even so, more than 25 percent of small cafés in the Netherlands include such spaces.
But the court in The Hague found that such spaces were ‘in conflict’ with the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which the Netherlands signed and which entered into force in 2005.
‘The tobacco laws banning smoking also cover smoking rooms, the court ruled, adding therefore the exception to the legislation was ‘invalid’.
Clean Air Netherlands (CAN), which had appealed after losing an earlier case in 2016, said it was ‘happy and satisfied’ with yesterday’s ruling.
It said its mission was to strive for a smoke-free society by discouraging tobacco use. ‘Smoking-rooms do not belong with this; therefore this is a small step in the right direction,’ it said in a note on its website.
It was not clear when or if the smoking-rooms would be closed, because there could be a further appeal, Dutch media was reported as saying.
The court threw out CAN’s claim that the ban covered all indoor public smoking spaces, saying it had not provided sufficient evidence.
Tag: Netherlands
Dutch reinforce ban
More support for lawsuit
The Dutch addiction treatment sector has thrown its weight behind a lawsuit alleging tobacco companies conspired to get people addicted to their products, according to a story on dutchnews.nl quoting addiction specialist Robert van de Graaf.
‘We’ve had enough,” Van de Graaf was quoted as saying. “The criminal cigarette and all the dealers need to be tackled.”
The sector has been debating throwing its weight behind the case for a year and last week’s statement of support by the biggest Dutch cancer hospital was said to have been the final push. “We need to get on with it,” Van de Graaf said. “This product is so dangerous. It is unbelievable that it is sold in supermarkets.”
The case was started by lung cancer patient Anne Marie van Veen and lawyer Bénédicte Ficq who accused the tobacco firms of alleged ‘deliberate damage to public health’ and ‘forgery of documents’.
They aim not to win damages but to force tobacco companies to behave differently.
They argue that tobacco firms cannot hide behind the freedom of choice of people to smoke because the firms are deliberately influencing smokers’ behavior.
‘To limit that freedom, addictive chemicals such as nicotine and other additives are put into cigarettes,’ they say.
‘And [the companies] overcome our natural aversion to poisons by adding substances like menthol.’
The public prosecution department is currently looking at the complaint and will decide whether or not the tobacco firms have a case to answer.Industry accused of murder
The US anti-tobacco organization Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) says that it has released a new video to draw attention to a Dutch criminal complaint against the tobacco industry for murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, attempted manslaughter, inflicting and attempting severe physical harm and deliberately harming health.
“I cannot understand that when you hit someone with a hammer, you are being prosecuted for serious harm. Or when you administer poison, you are prosecuted for poisoning. But the tobacco industry is left untouched while ultimately doing the same,” said the filing Dutch Criminal Lawyer Bénédicte Ficq.
In a press note issued through PRNewswire, ASH said that ‘tobacco’ was the only legal consumer product that killed its consumers when used as intended. ‘Cigarettes’ were also highly addictive, trapping users in a deadly addiction that many struggled to overcome.
‘The Oregon Supreme Court has said that the deceptive promotion of tobacco products could “constitute at least second-degree manslaughter”,’ ASH said. ‘The lethal consequences of smoking have been known to tobacco corporations for decades, yet they continue these activities, with full knowledge that millions of deaths will be caused by the ordinary use of cigarettes.
‘The tobacco industry has repeatedly been held civilly liable, but there has not been any movement in criminal court, yet.’
ASH’s executive director Laurent Huber said that a US state attorney general or a district attorney could decide to file criminal charges against a tobacco company for deaths the tobacco companies had caused. “At this point, we are just lacking the political courage to see a criminal case through,” Huber said.
ASH says that it has been researching the criminal liability and potential human rights violations of the tobacco industry for ‘years’.
‘Criminal charges are feasible and legally sound,’ it says. ‘The Dutch case can pave the way for other countries to take similar action.’
Cutting credit
The Dutch bank ABN Amro will no longer extend credit to clients in the tobacco industry, reports The Guardian.The Amsterdam-based bank’s decision came as it announced a new partnership with the national Heart Foundation in the fight against smoking, which kills some 20,000 people every year in the country of 17 million, according to a recent study.
“Our core value is that everybody has a right to be healthy,” said Marianne Verhaar, the bank’s director of relationship management for institutions and charitable organizations.
“The core activity of those in the tobacco industry is not compatible with our core values,” she was quoted as saying.
Existing contracts with tobacco industry clients will be respected, but will not be renewed and no new contracts will be signed, an ABM Amro official told Trouw newspaper.
A recent study by SEO Economic Research estimated the cost of smoking to Dutch society at around €2,000 ($2,200) per person per year.
Display ban to be imposed
The Dutch government is working on draft legislative that would ban the retail display of tobacco products, according to a statement given to parliament by the State Secretary of Public Health Martin van Rijn, as reported by Janene Pieters for the NL Times.Van Rijn was said to have given the involved industry associations until December 15 to come up with their own proposals, but their plans were deemed to be inadequate.
Van Rijn said the organizations had not gone far enough with their plans.
The NSO, the organization representing tobacconists and convenience stores, was said to have proposed to ban facade advertising from 2020, while proposals by representatives of service stations foresaw a partial display ban by the middle of 2019.
Because the organizations’ proposals had not met parliament’s demand for a display ban, the government would come with a legislative proposal to do so, Van Rijn said.
Philip Morris to close Dutch cigarette factory
Philip Morris International will shut down its manufacturing facility in Bergen op Zoom, the Netherlands, in response do declining demand for cigarettes in Europe.
The closure of the plant in Bergen op Zoom, PMI’s largest production facility worldwide, would result in 1,230 job losses, about 90 percent of its total workforce there. Production will shift to other factories in Europe with spare capacity, it said.
PMI’s said sales volumes have plummeted 20 percent in the past four years and that a recovery is “highly unlikely.”
The company also blamed a new EU tobacco-control law that will ban flavored cigarettes and require bigger warning labels on packets.
Earlier, Philip Morris said it would stop making cigarettes in Australia by year-end, resulting in the loss of 180 jobs as the company shifts production to South Korea.
Dutch smoking ban does another U-turn
The Netherland’s ban on tobacco smoking in bars and cafés will be reinstated across almost the entire hospitality industry in July next year, according to a DutchNews story quoting junior health minister, Martin van Rijn.
Changes to the tobacco law would be presented to parliament before October so that all legal obstacles could be dealt with and the total ban properly anchored in law, the minister said.
Once the ban was reintroduced, smoking would not be allowed in small cafés and bars run only by their owners, as was presently the case. But it would be permitted in separate sealed-off smoking areas without service.
“We are doing what we can with controls, warnings and fines but our financial resources are limited,” the minister said. “Ultimately… not smoking in any bar of café should become the norm.”
The minister conceded that the Dutch smoking ban been introduced to protect workers rather than the public and therefore small bars and cafés run by their owners had been exempted on the grounds that they had no staff. However, he said that the ban, brought in nearly five years ago, was widely flouted in bigger bars, cafés and nightclubs.
No justification was given in the story as to why small cafés and bars run only by their owners were being punished because larger establishments were breaking the law and law enforcement agencies were failing to crack down on these businesses. And there was no explanation as to why it was thought that law enforcement agencies would be more successful at cracking down on all cafés and bars rather than just some of them.
Proposal to raise smoking age
Junior Health Minister Martin van Rijn plans to introduce legislation to raise the Dutch legal age to buy tobacco products from 16 to 18, reports DutchNews.nl.
Earlier this month, the Dutch cigarette industry association SSI, the smoking tobacco association VNK, and Philip Morris Benelux, called for raising the legal tobacco buying age.
Anti-tobacco group Stivoro has blamed government policies, including Health Minister Edith Schippers’ 2010 decision to relax the country’s smoke-free law to exempt bars smaller than 70 square meters, for an anticipated increase in the adult smoking rate to 26.2 percent by the end of 2012.
The Dutch government is working on draft legislative that would ban the retail display of tobacco products, according to a statement given to parliament by the State Secretary of Public Health Martin van Rijn, as reported by Janene Pieters for the NL Times.