It is now nearly four months since the ban on smoking in bars and cafés came into force.

The catering industry body Horeca Nederland has just released figures showing that café turnovers fell by 26% this summer. Half of this, the organisation says, is due to the smoking ban.
So now it is screaming at the government to play fair and make sure the ban is legally enforced. Because, Horeca Nederland says, 15% of bars and cafes and discos are deliberately flouting it.
Smoking has been such an integral part of bar and café life that banning it was bound to hurt. But if the bar at the end of one street is still full of people puffing away, it is not fair competition to the one round the corner which has thrown out its ash-trays.
This issue is one where the typical Dutch policy of gedogen – turning a blind eye to something inconvenient like, say, the sale of small amounts of hashish – would be an admission of failure, not healthy pragmatism.
So how many bars and clubs have been fined so far for ignoring the ban in the last four months? Not one.
If the health minister and his officials cannot do a serious job in getting bars to comply with the new lgislation, then he should just throw in the towel and give up.