The fact she is unapologetic makes me like her all the more.
Posted on 05/05/2006 4:56:14 PM PDT by Huntress
"Hey, they can't smoke here!"
Such was my automatic assertion as I sat in a restaurant with my husband-to-be on my first visit to Denmark. Four years on, I still decry at least every week, "Hey, they can't smoke there, can they?!" And my husband shakes his head, looks at me patiently and explains once again that this is Denmark. Danes can and will smoke anywhere they darn well please. Trains. Lobbies. Malls. Ferries. Schools.
For a country that is so progressive and liberal in many ways, Denmark's lack of an operating smoking politic is quite disturbing. This world leader in windmill technology, this bastion of democracy, this forefront in design, this model of socialism, is a good quarter-century behind when it comes to anti-smoking legislation. And for any non-smoking Canadian, used to smoke-free spaces, well, life here in Denmark is one long dodge of one smoke-filled place to another. I'm getting good at holding my breath, and even better at being anti-social.
The smoke horror stories abound. I have sat on ferries where the prophetic parting between the "smoking" and "non-smoking" sections was the children's play area. I have attended (very briefly) a community play performance with invited seniors and children in the audience where you could barely see the stage through the haze. I have checked into a "non-smoking" dormitory room, only to be met with a gigantic ashtray. My complaints met blank looks. The room was non-smoking - so long as I was.
And, in a most shocking story, a colleague of my husband's attended her young daughter's Christmas concert at an elementary school, during which parents and grandparents sat chain smoking throughout the performances. She was left with the dilemma of either pulling her daughter out of that carcinogenic environment and thereby destroying all her child's effort and excitement, or letting her be in that toxic pall.
It seems absolutely unconscionable that any parent living in the modern, Western world should ever face such a situation, but face it she did. And, unfortunately, similar situations are all too common for non-smokers in Denmark.
Smokers protected by 'hygge'
Denmark does have some anti-smoking regulations, but there are always exceptions, and the exceptions rule.
The demands of hygge - a treasured Danish ideal, roughly translated as consensual cosiness - trump any trifling anti-smoking dross. After all, hygge is a sensual and social concept. It's all about good food, good company - those magic evenings. And Danes are generally loathe to disrupt this hygge-flow by insisting that smokers remove themselves to light up. Danish hygge demands that smokers be shown consideration . Indeed, that is often the official and public rhetoric - smoker consideration.
So, non-smoking elementary schools become smoke pits when the public are invited in. Non-smoking buses are hot-boxed by bus drivers on breaks. For any social event, non-smoking workplaces morph into raging nicotine fires as yet another fag is thrown in and fired up. My non-smoking friends and family face dilemmas of whether or not their birthday parties, their wedding receptions, their baby christenings will be smoke free. And I am left wondering if I can safely attend my non-smoking friends' functions, because their non-smoking status in no way ensures a smoke-free fest. So although it is socially deemed rather inconsiderate and downright anti-hygge to deny a smoker his/her right to smoke, no one seems to care about the rights of the non-smoker.
It is this general reluctance, this passive passive smoking, that causes one to question whether or not Denmark got that memo from the World Health Organization about smoking being an epidemic. Did it miss that UN brief? Not read that medical study? Fail to notice the success of non-smoking policies in other Western nations? Or does it just not care that 12,000 Danes die annually of smoking-related illnesses?
While less than a third of the Danish population actually smokes, the majority suffers. The number of youths smoking continues unabated. And the Cancer Society, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Lung Association, the Ministry of Health and a multitude of other organizations and interest groups appear frighteningly mute on the subject.
Anti-smoking messages 'lame'
I've seen two anti-smoking posters and one television ad in the two years I've lived here. Three. That's it. And lame ones at that. No savvy pre-movie advertisements. No attention-grabbing bus-stop subvertisements. No distressing public service announcements. No emphysemic addicts dragging through tracheotomies and frankly addressing their addiction. No Heather Crowe speaking out, while dying of cancer from second-hand smoke. Nada. Zip.
The chain-smoking reigning monarch of Denmark, Queen Margrethe II, remains the patron of the Danish Cancer Society. This would be less ironic if she openly and critically discussed her addiction, but she's quite unapologetic about it, insisting that she has a right to smoke. Cameramen have simply been told not to shoot her smoking.
Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the minister of health and interior affairs, continues to inhale his daily nic fix, not even ceasing for the recent christening reception of the new royal heir apparent, little Christian Valdemar Henri John. Despite the four names, he does have only two lungs, which the government and Grandma seem set on polluting. The government gave him a pony as a christening gift. I thought a smoke-free country would have been better.
Oh, but Lars Løkke Rasmussen has recently declared that as of April 1, 2007, all public institutions will be smoke free, excepting the many exceptions (and many are already written into the law). But I'm no fool. I know that the exceptions will continue to rule as long as the Danish concept of hygge only considers smokers. Until Danes become considerate of non-smokers (who are the majority, so hence, themselves), I know that despite forthcoming laws that will support a statement like, "Hey, they can't smoke here," I will be a hygge spoilsport for saying it.
Classic example of the left's mental sickness.
To be "liberal" has come to mean being opposed to liberty.
OMG! The horror! The horror!
Ping.
I wasn't planning any trips to Denmark - butt - I now think I'll delete it from my maps also.
Sob, sob, sob!
Booo Friggin Hooo.....
Excuse me, I need another marlboro
Ping-a-ling
Miss Jorgenson, I'll sit in this car with all the windows rolled up tight, I will smoke 2 cartons of Camel nonfilters...
You sit in that car, windows up, with a hose connected to the cars exhaust venting into your car until I finish smoking...
The little smoke nazi would definetly see what real "smoke hazard" is... at least until the hearse shows up...
>>>>>"To be "liberal" has come to mean being opposed to liberty"<<<<<
Yea, but... we have our share of nanny cops too!
TT
I'm all for people having rights, just as long as they don't want any that I don't think they should have. /s
If she doesnt like it she should stay the hell home. Other people besides her have rights.
The fact she is unapologetic makes me like her all the more.
HELP IS ON THE WAY.. FOR THE AUTHOR who forgot to include:
Denmark to ban smoking in public places in April 2007
Source: Agence France Presse (AFP) (fr), 2006-03-29
Intro:
Denmark plans to ban smoking in public places as of April 1, 2007.
"The government's goal is very clear: to know that you can walk around without being exposed to cigarette smoke against your will," Health and Interior Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen told reporters on Tuesday.
The government plans to propose the new legislation to parliament in October.
The bill would ban smoking in government ministries, national institutes and agencies and state-run companies, as well as shopping centres, sports arenas, cultural centres and other public spaces.
Bars, cafes and restaurants larger than 100 square metres (1,076 square feet) would also be non-smoking but they would be allowed to set up special smoking sections.
A poll published June 26 in Copenhagen-based Politiken, Denmark's No. 3 newspaper, found that 54 percent of 1,000 people surveyed favored smoke-free workplaces, up from 42 percent six months earlier. Only one in five companies prohibits smoking at work, according to the Danish Association of Managers and Executives.
``The government will have to give in to the pressure and pass a ban on smoking in all public places, possibly within a year,'' said Arne Rolighed, a former health minister in Copenhagen, who now runs the Danish Cancer Society.
A lot of Danish women smoke. In fact, Denmark has the highest lung cancer rate among women in the world.
In a tiny Scandinavian country, Denmark is half the size of Maine with at total population of just over half-million. Each year, over 1300 women die from lung cancer. Another 3700 succumb to smoking related diseases like emphysema and bronchitis. . .
So when did all this smoking begin? Well, you have to go back to the 1950's and that's when Danish women started working outside the home.
Dr. Falk: "The women's emancipation thing came rather early in our country. So you know, maybe it was a way to show that I'm in position that I could deal with my own life. I'm not dependent on my husband's salary."
http://www.tobacco.org/articles.php?pattern=DENMARK+SMOKING+BAN&records_per_page=10
I'll summarize for those who, like me, struggle to make it through such articles: Given the choice between reasonable tolerance of others and fascism, the author is the passionate defender of the virtues of the latter.
Does Jessica drive a car, fly on planes, ride a bus, use electricity or natural gas, or live in a house or other building? If so, I have news for her.
The poor widdle baby...........SHEESH........
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