Nonsmoking Catches on in Czech Republic

Though the Czech Senate recently bucked the European trend and loosened anti-smoking laws, pubs and restaurants are increasingly enacting their own bans

By Andy Markowitz and Luba Guzei

It's as much a part of the Prague pub experience as a cold, creamy-headed Pilsner. Enter one of the Czech capital's ubiquitous beer halls – and most of its restaurants and wine bars, for that matter – and you're likely to emerge smelling of smoke.

Czech politicians seem inclined to keep it that way. Bucking the regional trend, the Czech Senate agreed on 24 July to loosen tobacco restrictions in restaurants and bars, affirming the lower house's 11 June vote.

According to the advocacy group Smokefree Partnership, a dozen European Union states are now fully or virtually in line with Article 8 of the World Health Organization's 2003 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which deals with protection from exposure to tobacco in indoor workplaces and public spaces. Bulgaria is the latest to join the group, adopting a full ban to take effect next June.

The new Czech amendment mandates only that restaurateurs and publicans alert customers whether they allow smoking by means of a sticker on the door. If signed by President Vaclav Klaus, an outspoken opponent of mandated smoking restrictions, it would replace the current law that bans butts unless an establishment has clearly designated smoking and nonsmoking areas.

But there are indications that little by little, the anti-tobacco breeze wafting across Europe is permeating Prague. New and existing places across the capital are going smoke-free, and making it a selling point, even in working-class, pub-heavy neighborhoods like Zizkov and Nusle – where, almost unimaginably, one old-school eatery now trumpets itself as a nekuracka restaurace (nonsmoking restaurant) on a banner strung across the street by the entrance.

The list of smoke-free places on the Czech Coalition Against Tobacco's website now runs to 695, 124 of them in the capital. "In the last two years the number of restaurants [has grown] three times bigger than it was," said Katerina Langrova, the group's director.

"We are seeing the increasing number of restaurants that are applying to be listed there," Langrova said. "At the beginning they were mostly the restaurants interested in healthy lifestyles, or vegetarian restaurants. Recently I have to say there are more and more just regular pubs and restaurants, which is very nice to see."

"I think smoking was once a big part of traditional pub culture here, but that's changing. People here are very active, which doesn't really go well with smoking," said Evan Rail, author of Good Beer Guide: Prague and the Czech Republic and the blog Beer Culture.

"I see it changing faster in Prague than elsewhere in the country. But it's changing everywhere regardless."

SMOKED OUT

With about a quarter of adults smoking regularly, the Czech Republic ranks well down the EU table for tobacco use, according to figures from a 2008 WHO study. But it is the only member state that has not ratified the tobacco-control convention, and Smokefree Partnership ranks it among the EU's weakest countries in protecting nonsmokers from the effects of tobacco.

La Casa Blu in Prague's Old Town, which is described on its website as an "Ibero-American pub," has long been a hazy hangout for expats and locals. But the smoky environment weighed heavily on owner Jorge Zuniga Pavlov.

"It was a problem for me to come every day to smell this, the smoke," said Pavlov, a native Chilean who opened the restaurant in 1996. "It was not good for people who work for me to do something bad for their health."

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