Majority of restaurants to go smoke-free this summer

Few establishments have sought two-year transition period

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Most Finnish restaurants seem set to go completely smokeless from the beginning of June, when the amendment to the law on smoking in public areas comes into effect. The purpose of the amendment is to protect restaurant workers from the harmful effects of cigarette smoke.
     
Restaurants have the choice of applying for a two-year transition period in order to carry out changes, such as constructing designated smoking booths, but so far few establishments have opted to take this up.
      "In Helsinki ten applications were handed in a month ago. In Tampere the corresponding figure was five", explains superintendent Kaisa Mäntynen from the National Product Control Agency for Welfare and Health (STTV), a central office operating under the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and carrying the responsibility of monitoring the smokelessness of restaurants.
      The applications must be filed by the beginning of June. Otherwise the establishment will automatically turn smoke-free.
     
Where there is a designated smoking booth in a restaurant, no smoke must drift into the space where people eat or drink. If this happens, the use of the smoking booth may be banned, and the restaurant becomes smokeless.
      Even this will be monitored in a joint effort by the provincial administrative boards, local authorities, and the STTV. Heightened monitoring will take place from the beginning of June until the end of October.
      Otherwise it will be the restaurant proprietor's responsibility to control the smokelessness of the establishment. Customers who try to smoke in banned areas are to be removed from the premises. In the worst case, a fine may be imposed for an attempt to smoke.
     
"This will be extremely rare", believes chairman of the board Heimo Keskinen from Ravintolakolmio, a private group that owns 17 restaurants in Helsinki.
      "Last summer we were in Italy, where no law is said to be enforcable. The law on smoking worked perfectly. Nobody tried to smoke. We could not find one establishment where the proprietor would have had to take action against smoking. The law worked well and the same will happen in Finland."


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Parliament bans drinks from restaurant smoking booths (14.6.2006)
  Working group calls for non-smoking policy for all Finnish restaurants (22.6.2005)

Helsingin Sanomat