The Dutch are sensible people. Their blanket ban on smoking in bars has been amended. Now if the bar is owner-operated with no other staff and no bigger than 70 sqm then people can once more enjoy their cigarettes. And whatever else they legally buy I assume.
So nobody is unwillingly exposed to second hand smoke. And the private property rights of the bar owner are restored.
Interesting that the fight isn't over after all. I imagine it is quite on the cards that other European countries will follow suit.
Yet here, a country with an abysmal over-abundance of neurotic numbskulls, the insane campaign to make NZ smoke-free rolls on. A thought on that for the anti-tobacco zealots. If smoking tobacco was outlawed we will all pay more tax to a/ compensate for the $1 billion plus the government currently takes on tobacco and b/ through the increased mortality and extra ageing costs of newly complying non-smokers and c/ through policing the crime that the tobacco black market will create.
Grief doesn’t get better; it changes.
1 hour ago