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 Editorials | Issues | February 2008 
Mexico City's Smoking Ban Draws Praise, and Fire
 Dudley Althaus - Houston Chronicle
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Mexico City — At age 20, Ernesto Hernandez has been smoking for seven years and says nearly everyone in his circle of friends regularly lights up as well.
But lately, Hernandez has been cutting back, trying to drop the habit for good. And he's hoping that tough anti-smoking laws passed by Mexico City's legislature and Mexico's federal Congress will help by making it difficult for him to light up at will.
"It's going to force me to stop," said Hernandez, a student at an elite university in southern Mexico City. "It's not worth it to be out someplace and then have to leave in order to smoke."
Mexico City's legislative assembly on Tuesday passed a smoking ban for public places as draconian as any in the world. Once the ban is implemented, as early as next month, smoking will be banned completely from any public space — including offices, malls, restaurants and bars.
Also Tuesday, Mexico's Senate followed the lead of the lower house of congress in approving a nationwide, if less severe, ban on public smoking. The federal law would require designated smoking areas for most public spaces and force restaurants and bars to provide separate walled off rooms for smokers. The law imposes fines of up to $40,000 and even jail time for violators.
Mexico, where an estimated 16 million to 18 million people smoke and some 53,000 die each year from tobacco-related diseases, may be about to go cold turkey.
"We are very satisfied; this is a historic moment," said physician Jesus Felipe Gonzalez, who serves as president of a leading anti-smoking organization.
Just how well that process works, and how quickly it advances, remains a head scratcher.
Mexico City's police chief announced Tuesday that his officers will have neither the time nor the gumption to enforce a smoking ban. And one large restaurant chain has already won a federal injunction allowing it to ignore the smoking ban. Other legal challenges are expected.
At the same time, the Mexican public has had both a long love affair with tobacco and a well-worn habit of shrugging off laws it finds inconvenient or meddlesome.
For example, the Mexican capital's recently passed new traffic laws — which among other things outlaw the use of cellular phones while driving, the running of red lights and the backing down exit ramps onto freeways — have been widely ignored so far.
"We don't have a culture that will make this easy," said Luis Valencia, the 37-year-old manager of a popular cantina in a prosperous section of south Mexico City, who estimates that 85 percent of his customers smoke.
"But it's all good," he said. "We're modernizing. We're realizing that in other parts of the world these things are happening. In such a chaotic city, people are learning that they have to accommodate one another."
With the new laws, Mexico joins a growing number of nations and metropolitan areas that have either entirely banned or severely restricted smoking in public.
This year, France, Thailand Turkey and most of Germany have approved smoke-free laws, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington-based organization with a global focus to eradicate smoking.
Smoke-free laws in recent years have been been implemented in countries from Ireland, Italy and the United Kingdom to Bhutan and Lithuania.
Eleven of Canada's 13 provinces and 23 U.S. states have adopted similar laws as well. Smoke-free cities include New York, London, Paris and Bangkok.
How quickly such laws impact public behavior depends upon people's acceptance of smoking and their awareness of its dangers, said Mark Hurley, a spokesman for the campaign.
"In that kind of case, you have a much easier time," Hurley said. "The government has something to build on."
A public opinion poll published Tuesday in Reforma, a Mexico City newspaper, found that 79 percent of respondents, including smokers, supported some sort of smoking ban.
But about 40 percent of the respondents who smoke said prohibiting tabacco use completely would cause them to cut back on their visits to bars and restaurants.
"It's like the whole culture is set up to allow you to smoke," said Mario Romero, 20, who was walking with Ernesto Hernadez along a residential street with an unlit cigarette between his fingers.
"But the law will have an impact," Romero said. "Mexicans who don't smoke will be very tough about it."
dudley.althaus(at)chron.com |
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