“Please fasten your seatbelts and light up your cigarettes.”

It comes as no surprise to those of us familiar with smoking in Germany to learn that it was a German who had the bizarre idea to found a luxury airline that would offer all-smoking flights – long after the world’s airlines had banned smoking on all domestic and international flights. Alexander Schoppmann, a former stockbroker and heavy smoker from Düsseldorf, tried to get Smoker’s International Airways (SMINTair) off the ground in 2006. His idea was to lease Boeing 747-400 jumbo jets configured exclusively with first and business-class seating to fly between Düsseldorf and Nagoya, catering to the large Japanese community in Düsseldorf (“Tokyo on the Rhine”) and two nations known for high rates of smoking. Schoppmann also had ambitious plans for additional long-haul flight destinations. In the end it was an absurd idea, his financing fell through, and SMINTair’s maiden flight promised for October 2007 never took off. SMINTair vanished in a puff of smoke.

I wish I could say the same for smoking in Germany. Although things have improved in recent years, Germany is still a smoker’s paradise in many ways.

Difficult to imagine today: A flight attendant handing out packs of cigarettes! PHOTO: SAS

Germany and I have a long history when it comes to cigarette smoke. Ever since my first visit to Germany — oh those many years ago — I have loved the many differences and unique characteristics of life in Europe as compared to the USA… except for one thing. Smoking.

For many years it was almost impossible for a non-smoker like me to avoid Qualm — clouds of cigarette smoke almost everywhere you went. Back in the 1970s and ’80s, just about the only non-smoking zones were on German trains in the “Nichtraucher” cars. Those were also the days when you could still smoke on an airplane, making even the flight over the Atlantic an unpleasant introduction to Europe. Even though cigarette/tobacco advertising has been banned on German radio and television since 1975 (but not elsewhere; see below), it seemed like almost everyone smoked. Of course, even in the US, there was more smoking than today, but there were also more smoke-free zones.

New arrivals in Germany today have no idea how bad it was in the 1960s or ’70s and even up into the 1990s. Long after the US had non-smoking sections in restaurants (before a total ban in many states), the Germans did not even understand the concept of a non-smoking section. Of course, you usually could be smoke-free on public transport and in cinemas or theaters, but that was about it. In the 1990s German airports were added to the list of smoke-free areas, but Lufthansa, the main German airline, did not ban smoking on international flights until March 1998, three years after Delta became the first US airline to ban smoking on all of its flights.

On September 1, 2007 a new German federal law went into effect banning smoking in all rail stations and on all forms of public transport, including aircraft, trains, buses, streetcars, and taxis. Many of Germany’s 16 Länder (states) had already outlawed smoking on public transport. Soon after the federal law, Deutsche Bahn extended the smoking ban beyond station interiors to rail platforms and other areas. Special designated outside smoking zones are the only exception. The same 2007 law also had a section raising the legal age for purchasing tobacco products from 16 (!) to 18.

REGULATING TOBACCO and NICOTINE in GERMANY

• As of 2017, only three German states (North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, Saarland) had a complete smoking ban in restaurants and bars. The other 13 have exceptions for separate rooms in restaurants and for one-room pubs under 75 sq.m. in area.
• Most hotels and B&Bs in Germany and Europe today are non-smoking. In many cases the entire facility is non-smoking. As in the USA, smoking in a non-smoking room will result in an extra cleaning fee.
• Cigarette vending machines must verify that the purchaser is 18 or older via a bank card, German ID, or driving license.
• Tobacco Advertising: Germany is the only EU member state that still permits billboard and cinema advertising for tobacco products. The 2002 “Protection of Young Persons Act” banned the advertising of tobacco products in cinemas before 6 p.m. Radio and television ads for tobacco have been outlawed since 1975.
• Since 2017, under EU rules, 65 percent of cigarette and tobacco packaging must display combined pictorial and textual warning labels.
• Germany does not regulate vaping or the sale of vaping products at the federal level beyond applicable EU regulations. Some states do regulate vaping, while others do not. See more below under “Vaping.”

Nazi Germany’s Anti-Smoking Campaign

Germany was one of the last nations in the European Union to ban smoking in restaurants, bars, and other public places. (However, Austria is even worse.) Germany continues to have lax anti-smoking laws and enforcement, so it is more than ironic that it was in Nazi Germany that doctors and other researchers first made the connection between cigarette smoking and serious illnesses such as lung cancer and heart problems. The term “passive smoking” (Passivrauchen) was coined in Nazi Germany by researcher Fritz Lickint in 1930. The Nazis removed Lickint from his public position in 1934 for political reasons, but he continued his research into the link between tobacco and human health problems, from cancer to cardiovascular diseases and lowered fertility. Lickint was the first to label nicotine use as an addiction, and he advocated anti-smoking public health measures, including prevention of passive smoking.

A 1932 ad for the Sturm Cigarette Company in Dresden, a firm created by the Nazi Party’s Sturmabteilung (SA) to generate operating funds. Prices are in pfennigs per cigarette. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commmons

In his book The Nazi War on Cancer, Robert N. Proctor explores the contradictions and weirdness of Nazi death camps versus lung cancer research. Although Adolf Hitler himself had quit his heavy smoking habit begun in his youth, and forbid smoking in his presence, the Nazi regime’s efforts to discourage smoking were half-hearted, incoherent, and conflicted. The Nazi SA earned revenue from the sale of cigarettes manufactured by an SA-owned cigarette company (see photo). Although smoking was forbidden on streetcars, buses, and commuter trains, most of the Nazi anti-tobacco measures – medical lectures for soldiers, raising the tobacco tax, and restrictions on tobacco advertising and smoking in public spaces, restaurants and coffeehouses – were widely ignored. The number of smokers, in fact, went up, not down. Cigarette consumption did decline, but that was only because during the war years (1939-1945) most people could not afford cigarettes on the black market, the result of war rationing and decreased cigarette production.

The Nazis were not the first to wage a campaign against cigarette smoking in Germany. In 1840 the Prussian government reinstated a ban on smoking in public places. But after the Virginia inventor James Albert Bonsack patented his automated cigarette-rolling machine in 1881, it became possible to mass-produce cigarettes at low cost. Smoking became even more common in many countries. That in turn led to a backlash and an increase in anti-smoking efforts, including in Germany. Various anti-tobacco organizations arose in Germany and Austria in the 1900s. With names like the Bund Deutscher Tabakgegner (Federation of German Tobacco Opponents), these associations published pamphlets and journals, and worked to reduce smoking.

Austria, “the ashtray of Europe”

Even during the Nazi era, Austrians largely ignored any and all anti-smoking measures, much more than in Germany. It is not for nothing that Austria has been labeled “the ashtray of Europe.” It has rightly earned that designation, as I can personally attest. Most of my relatives, friends, and acquaintances in Austria are (or were) smokers.

An evening out at a local restaurant/pub a few years ago in Kitzbühel with relatives proved more than memorable. At the time I was told there was a ban on smoking in such establishments, but it was largely ignored by both patrons and employees. My first shock came as I entered a smoke-filled den of iniquity masquerading as a Gaststätte. The second came when I noticed the waitress taking a few puffs on her cigarette before she came out from behind the bar to take our order. (I guess I should be grateful that she didn’t have a cigarette in her mouth while at our table.)

In late 2019 Austria’s new coalition government reversed the pro-smoking measures passed by the previous government, reinstating smoking restrictions more in line with EU guidelines, but whether Austria will really change its ashtray ways is less than certain.

Vaping (Dampfen) and e-Cigarettes

Since the introduction of e-cigarettes in 2003, they have been available in Germany and Austria. Largely unregulated before 2014, vaping and e-cigarettes now fall under EU guidelines for nicotine products. All EU member nations were required to pass laws by 2016 that conformed to the 2014/40/EU directive issued in April 2014. Both Austria and Germany did so. Following the usual court challenges in both nations in 2015, the sale and use of vaping devices is legal under EU guidelines. Since they do not contain tobacco, vaping liquids are not subject to the additional tobacco taxes that cigarettes, cigars, and other tobacco products are subject to. EU guidelines set a minimum age limit of 18 for vaping.

The laws concerning vaping in non-smoking areas vary from state to state, and according to the governing agency. For instance, Deutsche Bahn (DB) treats vapers the same as smokers. Vaping is not allowed on DB trains or in stations. However, it is allowed in designated smoking zones. Most of Germany’s public transport systems, including the KVB in Cologne, the MVG in Munich, the Hochbahn AG in Hamburg, and the BVG in Berlin (15-euro fine!), do not allow vaping at their stations or on their trains, buses, and trams.

The state of Hesse bans vaping anywhere smoking is also forbidden (i.e., in bars and restaurants) – because of the health risks. On the other hand, in Lower Saxony vaping is allowed in restaurants and bars where normal cigarette-smoking is not allowed. Since each bar and restaurant can also make its own vaping rules if there is no state law, it’s best to ask before you vape. No vaping at airports or on airplanes is pretty much an international rule, and a German one as well. Vaping liquids are treated the same as any liquid when you’re traveling by air.

Germany, Austria, and other parts of Europe have not experienced the deaths and serious health issues that occurred in the United States, mostly because vaping liquids containing THC or non-standard ingredients can’t be sold or used legally. Gray-market vaping products from non-commercial providers are rare in Germany. Switzerland, which is not in the EU, and has its own regulations, has not experienced vaping-related health issues either. That does not mean, however, that there is no debate or controversy in Germany concerning the potential dangers of vaping. In late 2019 Germany’s new drug commissioner, Daniela Ludwig, called for a wide-ranging ban on billboards or posters advertising cigarettes and “vapor products” in public spaces, but that is a far cry from countries that entirely ban vaping – Argentina, Mexico, and Thailand among them. A recent study indicated that cigarette use is gradually sinking in Germany, while vaping rates are increasing.

– HF