How did smokers’ life change during the last year in Hungary?

I spent my last weekend in Bratislava and – since, after, and during sightseeing our local friend brought us to some of her favourite cafés and pubs as well – I surprisedly experienced that it is still allowed to smoke in public places in the neighbourhood. I was surprized, because after that Hungarian legislation changed from one of the most permissive strategies towards the regulation of smoking in Europe to the strictest prohibition –regarding almost all closed areas such as working places, pubs, restaurants, stations of public transport vehicles, and one is not allowed to smoke closer than 5 meters in their surroundings – I supposed that this restriction was urgent due to an EU directive. The new „law for the protection of non-smokers” is valid from the 1st January of 2012, and even the grace period passed on the 1st of April.

Despite the abrupt change, smokers – by every indication – got used to it quite quickly. Representatives of the hotel trade were very much afraid of losing masses of costumers, but in fact the smokers did not abandone pubs and clubs, although there are some places where they can still smoke without going out to the cold street: the so called „flat-pubs” which are formally private flats, not public pubs, but actually function as public pubs where it is allowed to smoke. (Interesting notice for smokers: the most famous one is ’Skanzen Club’, you can find it in Köztelek street 4/A). So the biggest problem for the already non-smoking pubs and clubs is that their smoking guests go out to the street and disturb the inhabitants of the neighbourhood and sometimes there are many stumps left, so cleaning of the area of the entrance gives additional work for the employees of such pubs.

The famous ruin pubs of Kazinczy street can have as many costumers in a weekend as 10 thousand. You can imagine the noise at night and the amount of stumps on Monday mornings… The most popular of these ruin pubs, that you may well know, Szimpla, had to pay for the sound-proofing for 25 flats of the street. It pays for the cleaning of the street regularly, and additionally – in order to keep the neighbours peaceful – gives 50% account for the pensioner inhabitants of the neighbourhood. There are not available statistics though how many pensioners attend Szimpla regularly…

The National Institute for Health Improvement has recently made a survey, that interestingly stated that not only the 61% of non-smokers (I am one of them) are satisfied with the new strict „law for the protection of non-smokers”, but even the 25% of smokers.

Agnes Kelemen

Nationalism Studies Department