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Europe’s incoming health chief has vowed to crack down on smoking, saying there is no bigger evil to battle throughout Europe. Will Malta prove to be an example?
Matthew Vella
Millionaires may enjoy breakfasting on “orange juice and Ryvita,” but the unemployed, as George Orwell would have it in his Road to Wigan Pier, don’t want “dull, wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty’… three penn’orth of chips… twopenny ice-cream!”
The leader in the Daily Telegraph hailed Orwell’s “rich vein of common sense” to point out that “in a spiritually impoverished world”, the little pleasures in life like drinking, smoking and blow-up meals, are hard to give up, much as they are in Malta, where smoking is the pursuit of 25 per cent of the population.
Smoke and drink will no longer be bedfellows in bars where the effects of the smoking ban, which has crowned the Health Promotion Unit’s Mario Spiteri’s long campaign against smoking, are being felt well into the first week of the prohibition. But whilst Spiteri claims more and more smokers have turned to the HPU’s cessation clinic following the ban, justifying the end of smoking in bars remains subject to interpretation.
Spiteri says the people will eventually get “used to it.” Whether this law suits the Maltese character however has offered mixed opinions – owners of small bars that do not have outdoor facilities and have now seen their clientele move towards other bars are already complaining of an instant economic impact. But the argument is not about the advantages and disadvantages of smoking in bars – it is whether the end of smoking in bars has been a sensible decision borne out of health-conscious pro-activeness or a health-conscious paranoia.
Enforcing the ban
One San Gwann barman complains about not knowing how the law will be enforced: “You can’t expect me to tell a guy who’s just had three beers here to stop smoking,” he gestures in description of his working-class clientele, which is now only drinking beer and whisky. “I’ve already had clients leaving. They just don’t like going in and out of the bar to have a smoke.”
Another Sliema barman also complained of clients getting frustrated at not being able to smoke, although he said getting people to stop smoking had not proved hard.
Those like Philip Fenech, the General Retailers and Traders Association’s leisure and entertainment spokesperson, believe the ban is unfair within an industry that embraces smoking as a culture. “Not that we are pro-smoking,” Fenech disclaims, “but in establishments where alcohol and loud music send adrenaline levels higher, the banning of smoking can lead to problems with rowdy clients. Nightlife is for escape, to release pent-up tension.”
Whilst establishments of areas over 60 square metres have already complied with the ban by removing their ashtrays and warning their clients not to smoke, questions of enforcing the ban – especially in the larger establishments – are still grey areas. Even the GRTU is not sure how the police will be conducting the enforcement. Fenech believes that establishment owners will encounter problems with clients who refuse to stop smoking, especially in small workmen’s bars and village titotla bars. The GRTU believes the ban will lead to anomalous situations in which it will be the clients and not the bar owners who should be liable to a fine for breaching the ban.
Earlier this week, establishments removed their ashtrays and affixed GRTU notices to the public that smoking was banned inside their bars and restaurants. The association is claiming that the owners should not be fined if both their forewarning and efforts to restrain people from smoking fail. Following the meeting with the police, the GRTU is still unsure as to how enforcement can be effectively carried out.
Prohibitionist doom
Both Fenech and the GRTU’s Vince Farrugia have a smoking anecdote to holler about: a group of Irishmen that entered a bar in the Qawra area left the place in a rage after being informed of the smoking ban after having ‘fled’ from Ireland’s own drastic ban. “Economically, there has already been an impact on bars, and this impact will be felt by the workers who are directly or indirectly employed within the leisure and entertainment industry.”
Socially, Fenech portents a more ominous, if speculative, scenario: “Clients are buying their alcohol from drinking shops and off-licences, turning to an unhealthy private party culture. Unlike public places, there is no security or police control of alcoholic and drug abuse in this case, so this could take antisocial behaviour elsewhere in private. We saw this happening when opening hours in Paceville were curtailed. The punters went underground and out of sight of police to organise illegal gatherings.”
Fenech disagrees with Mario Spiteri’s comments that the small establishments have been erecting canopies outside for their clients:
“Mario Spiteri does not have the experience at shop-floor level. His claims about canopies and larger establishments having had already designated smoking areas are a figment of his imagination. Anyone can go see this for themselves. When the GRTU started discussions with the Minister on the smoking ban, we asked for smaller establishments to be allowed to install proper extraction and purification machines since they could not possibly have sealed-off, designated smoking areas.”
The law demands that apart from the machines, a physical partition is needed for a designated smoking area, one which is cut off from the rest of the establishment since it cannot stand as a passage to other exits or toilets. “We walked out of discussions with the Malta Standards Authority on the purification machines because the specifications they demanded were too high and costly when those available in Malta are already practical and suitable.”
Spiteri’s triumph
Mario Spiteri, the Health Promotion Unit’s director and vehement anti-smoker, accuses the GRTU of conducting a scare-mongering campaign by saying that small bars are incurring loss of sales, and lambastes as ‘ridiculous’ Philip Fenech’s claim that the smoking ban will push people into a private sphere of alcohol and drug abuse.
“These are excuses,” Spiteri says. “What will happen is that smokers are going to decrease because they will find it hard to keep up their habit.”
Spiteri’s exhaustive crusade against smoking has achieved fruition after years working in the fields of food safety, substance use prevention, and health and safety, subjects which he pioneered within the Institute of Tourism Studies.
A former two-packet-a-day smoker himself, he quit shortly before getting married: “This is just like a normal rite of passage. Young people do it just to do it. Some of them never become regular smokers. Others however have been indisputably proven to become physically addicted.”
Spiteri studied in the UK and conducted research on the effects of tobacco advertising amongst the students from the Junior College sixth form in 1992.
“The laws concerning smoking in public places had been in the offing for two years already, prior to my becoming Health Promotion director,” Spiteri says, who in comments to MaltaToday earlier in the year expressed his hopes that this law was the first step in a total banning of smoking, such is Spiteri’s
“There will always be problems. In general the people have accepted. Rome was not built in a day. Smokers will get used to take their habits outside. And soon enough we’ll have litter bins for them outside too.
“I think the Maltese tend to rebel against anything they interpret as being imposed upon them. Maybe that is part of our Mediterranean character. But when undercover policemen swooped up on bars selling drinks to under-aged clients, everybody followed suit and started respecting the law. And the same happened with seatbelts and mandatory helmets – after enforcement, nobody will be risking.”
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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