Ireland Celebrates First Smoke-Free Year

Ireland can breathe a smoke-free sigh of relief Tuesday when it marks the first anniversary of a pioneering ban on smoking, the success of which has inspired similar moves elsewhere.

The ban on smoking in pubs, restaurants and workplaces, introduced on March 29, 2004, had been expected to meet with widespread resistance in a country where the pub culture of a drink and a smoke were considered part of its lifeblood.

Instead, the sight of smokers puffing away outside pub doors has become familiar across Ireland, and the only haze wafting through bars these days comes from having one drink too many.

Similar laws had been introduced in cities and states like New York and California, but Ireland was the first country to introduce a nationwide ban. Malta, Norway and Italy have since followed suit.

"It's healthier," said bartender and non-smoker Paddy Martin, pouring pints at Foley's Bar, close to the Irish parliament buildings in Dublin. "I feel better when I go home."

Anti-smoking lobby group ASH reckons tobacco kills six times as many people in Ireland as road accidents, work accidents, drugs, murder, suicide and AIDS combined, and is a massive drain on health resources.

Professor Luke Clancy, chairman of ASH's Irish branch, has said the ban could become the "health initiative of the century."

QUIET PINT

But not everyone has welcomed it.

Some pub owners and drinks firms blame the ban for a drop-off in sales -- bar revenues fell 6.3 percent in the first nine months of 2004. Cigarette sales dropped about 18 percent last year compared to a 10 percent fall the previous year.

The subdued atmosphere in Foley's Bar -- where only a handful of people were drinking quietly Saturday night in a scene repeated in many other pubs outside Dublin's main tourist spots -- seemed to back the claims.

But the decline of the Irish pub has more to do with high prices and lifestyle changes than the smoking ban, locals say.

"It's the smoke and the drink," said Foley's Martin, handing over a half-pint of Guinness, which at 2.60 euros ($3.38) is one euro more expensive than buying a similar size can in an off-license.

Alcoholic beverages -- some 82 percent above the eurozone average -- cost more in Ireland than in any other European Union country, according to figures from Eurostat published last year. The newly affluent Irish, enjoying the fruits of Ireland's Celtic Tiger boom in the late 1990s, increasingly choose a glass of wine in their own home over a pub-poured beer.

But for those smokers and drinkers who venture out for a taste of Ireland's famed "craic" (fun), the smoking ban can have some benefits.

"I've met more people standing outside and having a cig," said Sue Taylor, visiting Dublin from Yorkshire in England, standing outside a pub in the popular Temple Bar area.

"But I'd be barred from every pub in Britain if they introduced it because I wouldn't do it."