The government’s attitude to smoking is very confused indeed, writes DutchNews.nl editor Robin Pascoe.

Earlier this month, I attended my son’s high school diploma presentation. After the speeches, the presentations and the photographs, we all flooded on to the school plein for the borrel. Drinks, herring and assorted hapjes were handed round by lower school pupils to proud parents and this year’s graduates, the boys mainly in jackets and ties, the girls in the shortest dresses and highest heels.
It was all very jolly and traditional, but it is hard to imagine a high school graduation day anywhere else in the world where school leavers knock back the beer and prosecco with such gusto, or wave their Marlboro cigarettes in the air with quite as much abandon. All of them academic successes, and most of them living proof of the abject failure of the government’s efforts to stop people smoking.
Official attitudes

Indeed, nothing generates quite as much baffled and bitter comment on the DutchNews.nl website as smoking. Forget the banking bonuses, the blonde bombshell and healthcare cuts – what expats and international workers in the Netherlands cannot fathom is what the official Dutch attitude to tobacco actually is.
In line with most of the rest of the EU, the Netherlands has apparently imposed a ban on smoking in cafes, bars and clubs, although you might be forgiven for thinking the start date for the ban still has to be set given the prevelance of ashtrays.
Research from the health ministry’s own inspectors earlier this month confirmed the trend: smoking is back in more than half the country’s bars.
Anarchy

And why is the ban so widely flouted? According to our readers, it’s the ‘anarchic’ Dutch mentality. ‘The Dutch aren’t keen on being told what to do even if all the research and examples from all over the world tell them what a positive difference it makes for those that live there,’ commented Scottish expat Mazza on the site.
What is the government’s response to all this? Egged on by the PVV, it took a flying leap into the populist swamp by making one of its first acts a partial reversal of the ban. The government decided that in small cafes – less than 70m2 and with no staff – the ban would no longer apply.
You might wonder how a 70m2 cafe manages to exist with a bar crew of just one – who also happens to be the owner of the establishment – but that is by the by.
As DutchNews.nl reader ZenPlus wrote: ‘A health ministry, implementing a measure to facilitate cancer, lung diseases, addiction, allergies and heart diseases? Anywhere else in the world would call it by its real name, Ministry of Ill-health.’
Fines
To be fair, this month health minister Edith Schippers has admitted the paltry fines for cafes that break the ban are being ignored, and has decided to double them – to €600 for a first time offender
But she has no plans to employ more than 80 inspectors or to make breaking the ban a criminal offence because, she says, this would be too expensive and generate resentment within the industry. And to emphasise just how serious she is about reducing reliance on tobacco, the minister has scrapped stop-smoking aids from the basic health insurance policy as well.
This laissez-faire attitude to smoking tobacco is in sharp contrast to the government’s get tough policies on those other favourite teenage vices – drink and drugs. The under-16s caught with a can of beer or a Bacardi breezer will soon be committing a criminal offence, but they can still smoke illicit cigarettes at school. Well, the minister did pledge in January to put a stop to playground smoking. But since then, silence.
Money talks
Perhaps we should not be too surprised. After all, smoking earns a lot of money – €2.4bn in taxes for the treasury – which more than offsets the €2bn a year which PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates smoking costs the Netherlands each year.
And, as Schippers’ fellow party member Anne Mulder told a parliamentary debate last month, paying for therapy to help smokers stop will actually increase spending on the health service, because non-smokers live longer and older people are more expensive to look after.
That research is widely disputed nowadays, although the message does not appear to have reached politicians yet. And, cynics could add that the more people take up the habit, the more people will drop dead at a younger age and the less money will be needed to pay the nation’s pension bill as well.
And for the next generation of school-leaving smokers now heading off into academia, industry and potential retirement at 67, that could be very good news indeed.
This article was originally published in the Financieele Dagblad