We all know that smoking is bad for you. Yet, smoking regulation remains contentious on the basis of endangering individual rights, their discriminatory potential, and, notably, due to economic considerations. Smoking bans are part of a larger agenda of tobacco control focusing on health issues and involving, on one side, various activist groups whose interests are often aligned with those of the state as a powerful ally, and on the opposing side the tobacco firms as well as various organizations such as bars. This ongoing contention results in smoking bans being difficult to implement. In our study we focus on the resistance to smoking bans by small bars in the Netherlands. We investigate how small bars engaged the state in a David-versus-Goliath scenario, in order to overturn the smoking ban and avert the economic hardship they expected to incur resulting from it.
As mentioned, fiercely opposing the new smoking regulations were small bar owners who joined the lead resistance association: the ‘Save the Small Bars’ (SSB) Foundation. However, the campaign against the smoking ban was not only framed in economic terms focusing on the economic hardships, but significantly it also centred on the bans conceivably undermining the bars’ ‘community function’: “A small bar in Holland has a social function and what you are doing is that you rip that out of the society through this stupid law” (co-founder of SSB). The bars’ social function in their communities is further illustrated by a patron stating that “I come here for the gezelligheid (literally, sociability and conviviality). If all smokers go outside I will be here all by myself. I have asked the bar owner if my friends could please smoke again.”
Clearly, bars play an important role in defining the identities of groups, communities and societies, and in defining the relationship between individuals and the wider social context. And as such, bars perform an important social function in local communities. However, it can be expected that communities differ and, resulting from that, in some regions in the Netherlands resistance was much fiercer compared to other regions (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Save the Small Bars Foundation’s membership by region
Taking into account the characteristics of communities, specifically their social cohesion, we focused on the struggle between the state and small businesses. We found strong support for the prediction that the communities’ social cohesion (as expressed in their residential stability and in the sense of identification of residents with the collective) matter and influence local organizations’ actions above and beyond a multitude of other factors. It can thus be concluded that the level of resistance from small powerless organizations is determined by that, i.e., the community’s overall social endowment as well as its specific local economic features, which we control for.
In our case, local communities could facilitate, support and even stimulate the resistance of small bar owners against a powerful actor. We showed that community cohesion is a multidimensional construct that consists of the residential stability fostering a latent relational infrastructure in the community, and kinship, which generates a sense of belonging and care for the community. Further, a highly cohesive community has boundaries that are less open or receptive to external information, ideas, and values, and we show that in such cases the effect of resistance in neighbouring communities is weaker. It is important to note that we distinguished between the ‘physical permeability’ of a community boundary, which means that the likelihood of ideas to be ‘physically carried in’ is reduced due to lesser movement of residents across shared boundaries, and the ‘cognitive permeability’ of a community boundary, which refers to the strong sense of belonging to a particular community and the accompanying normative framework that limits the utilization of ideas, norms and values from beyond the community’s boundary.
The bars’ successful action reveals a case in which the state was unsuccessful in imposing regulations on small business organizations due to strong community forces. Our case is especially noteworthy given that the organizations in question are not giant businesses with very deep pockets and throngs of lobbyists. The organizations considered are small bars, owner-run establishments. As described above, they were able to challenge the regulations and prevailed (see also Table 1). It is indeed the interrelation among the bars and their cohesive, supportive community that provides the foundation for these powerless organizations to resist state regulations.
With the enforcement of strong governmental pressures that are seen as harmful to members of a community (the small bars), the social cohesion of a community might be even further increased and offers relatively powerless actors strong arms to oppose a regulatory force. This outcome provides additional support to the idea that the social context matters and when an organization, however small, serves an important social function in its community and joins forces with other, similar, organizations in its immediate environment, it may have the ability to exert power and influence above and beyond its net economic contribution and/or value even in the face of strong institutional pressures.
Table 1. Bar owners’ responses
Response | Motivation/actions | Representative quotes |
---|---|---|
Resistance | Economic reasons | I was able to comply for a month or three. My turnover went down 25 per cent. If my customers ask me, they are allowed to smoke. You have to do something, otherwise they will stay away. |
Atmosphere in the bar | I personally think that a smoking ban for a restaurant is good, that it will benefit the flavour of the food. But the atmosphere has really changed. You are having a nice conversation and when someone wants to smoke he or she has to go outside. Sometimes you will be alone just waiting for your partner. | |
Principal issue | If it is not allowed to smoke in my joint, I quit. If you kill someone in the Netherlands, you get less punishment than a bar owner leaving ashtrays in his bar. I risk 18.000 Euros of fines. Why? To protect people from smoke. But I refuse to comply. I prefer to close the doors. | |
Compliance | Mimetic behavior | It does not really affect me. It would be different if the bars in my direct environment would have ashtrays back on the table. Then your customers are gone. It is as simple as that. But we have an agreement: no ashtrays. |
Fear of fines | Yes, I am one of the few bars in [municipality] where the ashtray is not back on the table. Some of my customers are laughing at me. They say that I am an idiot because other bars do allow smoking. But within a day or ten I expect the first serious fines. The pressure from politics to enforce the law will be high. So that will happen. | |
Community solidarity | I am optimistic about the future of the village bar. Many regular patrons have said: I will be coming. This village is very solidary; people will not miss out on their beer. And another advantage: I do not have to clean dirty ashtrays again. | |
Resistance Tactics | Symbolic actions | We got a lot of nice reactions on the tipi. Friday a lot of police officers were in it, and people who went to church were also enthusiastic. But it is obviously ridiculous that you ask your guests to smoke in a tipi. We would have liked to smoke the peace pipe with the Minister though. |
Monetary actions | We ask smokers for a voluntary contribution for paying the fines. We have a smoking pot, where regular customers donate money to pay for the first fine of 300 Euro. |
|
Actions against inspections | We agreed that we would call each other when the inspector visits us. The action committee is about to publish pictures of inspectors on the internet. “It is not our intention to publicly disgrace these people, but we should know who is coming in our bars”. |
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Notes:
- This article is based on the authors’ paper There’s No Beer Without a Smoke: Community Cohesion and Neighboring Communities’ Effects on Organizational Resistance to Antismoking Regulations in the Dutch Hospitality Industry, in Academy of Management Journal (2016), Vol. 59, No. 2, 545–578
- The post gives the views of its authors, not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School of Economics.
- Featured image credit: John Benson CC-BY-2.0
- Before commenting, please read our Comment Policy
Tal Simons (t.simons@tilburguniversity.edu) is currently a professor at the department of Management (Organization & Strategy group), Tilburg School of Economics and Business. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University. Her research interests mainly concern dynamics of persistence and change of organizations, organizational forms, populations and categories. Those are examined in a variety of contexts, such as contested industries and the creative sector among others, using varied methodologies, frequently combining quantitative and qualitative methods and longitudinal designs. Tal’s research has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Management Science and Industrial and Corporate Change among others.
Patrick Vermeulen (p.vermeulen@fm.ru.nl) is a full professor of strategy and international management at the Institute for Management Research of Radboud University in the Netherlands. He also received his PhD from Radboud University. His research interests include institutional change and institutional complexity, innovation in developing countries and organization design. In his work he uses varied methodologies, but with an emphasis on qualitative research. Patrick’s research has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Studies, Long Range Planning, and the International Journal of Research in Marketing.
Joris Knoben (j.knoben@fm.ru.nl) is a full professor of business economics at the Institute for Management Research, Radboud University. He received his PhD from Tilburg University. His research focuses on the two-way interaction between the external environment of organizations and their behavior and performance. He primarily examines this interaction in the form of inter-firm relations and networks and using a variety of quantitative research methods. Joris’s research has been published in, among others, the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of Management, and the Journal of Economic Geography.
OSHA also took on the passive smoking fraud and this is what came of it:
Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence: Third Edition
This sorta says it all
These limits generally are based on assessments of health risk and calculations of concentrations that are associated with what the regulators believe to be negligibly small risks. The calculations are made after first identifying the total dose of a chemical that is safe (poses a negligible risk) and then determining the concentration of that chemical in the medium of concern that should not be exceeded if exposed individuals (typically those at the high end of media contact) are not to incur a dose greater than the safe one.
So OSHA standards are what is the guideline for what is acceptable ”SAFE LEVELS”
OSHA SAFE LEVELS
All this is in a small sealed room 9×20 and must occur in ONE HOUR.
For Benzo[a]pyrene, 222,000 cigarettes.
“For Acetone, 118,000 cigarettes.
“Toluene would require 50,000 packs of simultaneously smoldering cigarettes.
Acetaldehyde or Hydrazine, more than 14,000 smokers would need to light up.
“For Hydroquinone, “only” 1250 cigarettes.
For arsenic 2 million 500,000 smokers at one time.
The same number of cigarettes required for the other so called chemicals in shs/ets will have the same outcomes.
So, OSHA finally makes a statement on shs/ets :
Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)…It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded.” -Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec’y, OSHA.
Why are their any smoking bans at all they have absolutely no validity to the courts or to science!
A little on the “slippery slope” that apparently – according to the antismoking fanatics – doesn’t exist.
The first demand for a smoking ban was in the late-1980s concerning short-haul flights in the USA of less than 2 hours. At the time, the antismokers were asked if this was a “slippery slope” – where would it end? They ridiculed anyone suggesting such because this ban was ALL that they were after.
Then they ONLY wanted smoking bans on all flights.
Then the antismokers ONLY wanted nonsmoking sections in restaurants, bars, etc., and ensuring that this was ALL they wanted.
Then the antismokers ONLY wanted complete bans indoors. That was all they wanted. At the time, no-one was complaining about having to “endure” wisps of smoke outdoors.
While they pursued indoor bans, the antismokers were happy for smokers to be exiled to the outdoors.
Having bulldozed their way into indoor bans, the antismokers then went to work on the outdoors, now declaring that momentary exposure to remnants of dilute smoke in doorways or a whiff outdoors was a “hazard”, more than poor, “innocent” nonsmokers should have to “endure”.
Then they ONLY wanted bans within 10 feet of entranceways.
Then they ONLY wanted bans within 20 feet of entranceways.
Then they ONLY wanted bans in entire outdoor dining areas.
Then they ONLY wanted bans for entire university and hospital campuses, and parks and beaches.
Then they ONLY wanted bans for apartment balconies.
Then they ONLY wanted bans for entire apartment (including individual apartments) complexes.
Then they ONLY wanted bans in backyards.
On top of all of this, there are now instances, particularly in the USA, where smokers are denied employment, denied housing (even the elderly), and denied medical treatment. Smokers in the UK are denied fostering/adoption. Involuntary mental patients are restrained physically or chemically (sedation) rather than allow them to have a cigarette.
At each point there was a crazed insistence that there was no more to come while they were actually planning the next ban and the brainwashing required to push it. There has been incessant (pathological) lying and deception. Many medically-aligned groups have been committed to antismoking – their smokefree “utopia” – since the 1960s. They have prostituted their medical authority to chase ideology. All of it is working to a tobacco-extermination plan run by the WHO and that most governments are now signed-up to.
This has all happened in just 20 years. If it was mentioned 20 years ago, or even 10 or 5 years ago, that smokers would be denied employment and housing, and smoking bans in parks and beaches, it would have been laughed at as “crazed thinking”. Yet here we are. Much of it has happened before and it has all been intentional, planned decades ago. We just don’t learn or we’re going to have to learn the very hard way because it has to do with far, far more than just smoking.
Very interesting research and great application of the social movements literature to a thorny issue.
There is great irony in the claims made by people that allowing smoking in small bars will benefit the community, in that the long-term consequence of continuing to allow smoking in small crowded places is that many of the people participating in such spaces will die an early death! Stepping back a couple of feet from your analysis, I detect the hidden hand of the tobacco industry.
What the tobacco industry did was succeed in convincing people that the health risks of inhaling secondhand smoke were subordinate to the community games achieved by allowing people to congregate and continue to interact as they had before, with smoke.
I can’t imagine that, even in the Netherlands, small businesses could come up with such a blatantly self-serving rationale without a lot of outside help and support. Research has shown that, around the world, when groups formed to oppose bans on smoking or regulation of smoking, the tobacco industry funds “front groups” to do their dirty work for them. Thus, while I don’t doubt that the bar owner’s responses were heartfelt and they were champions of their own communities, I wonder whether the movement would have had such momentum without strong financial backing from the tobacco industry.
You mention the “save the small bars” foundation, but don’t indicate how it got its funding. I suppose they claim that it came from member contributions, but before even searching for documentation to prove it, I strongly believed that the bulk of the money came from the tobacco industry.
With a simple Google search, I found evidence from a news article that supports my argument:
http://vorige.nrc.nl//international/article2278646.ece/Big_tobacco_pays_Dutch_opposition_to_smoking_ban
Notice that the article says that each bar and café owner paid only an annual fee of €250. By contrast, the tobacco industry kicked in €50,000.
What you’ve documented is another example of the power of big business to co-opt and manipulate a vulnerable and even possibly gullible public.
There is no hidden hand Howard and if you looked around at the number of FB sites you will see this is a people movement. You will also know that under the grand settlement of 1998 the tobacco industry is prevented from undertaking any research or promoting any line that runs contrary to the anti smoking lobby. Effectively gagged and that there be only one truth. This is a war on an aesthetic. A cosmetic issue which is easily solved, but that is not the will of the anti smoking lobby. Inclusive solution are not to be explored, tolerance is to them intolerable.
Smokers would welcome dividing lines. We do not want to disturb anyone, but we do want the right to socially interact in comfort in surroundings of equal quality. If the Victorians could do it without technology we can do it today. Giving back the right for a proprietor to choose which clientele they cater for and who they don’t would be a good start. It cannot be that every non smoker has all the outlets and the smoker has none. That’s 20% of the adult population barred. You will not find one piece of epidemiology, the principle weapon of the anti smoking lobby on ETS that gets above an RR of 1.29 That’s about the same Relative Risk factor as drinking a glass of milk a day and contracting lung cancer. Think about it..this is the burning of a leaf from a plant, 96% of which is steam not exposure to plutonium 210.
I and many others have been looking for the proof for over ten years. Nobody has put a penny in my or anyone else’s bank account. However as a tax payer I have put millions into the anti smoking lobby. £500,000 a year into ASH alone.
Consider Boffetta, et al: Multicenter Case-Control Study of Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Lung Cancer in Europe, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 90, No. 19, October 7, 1998: “public indoor settings did not represent an important source of ETS exposure.”
In addition, one large study looked at 38 years worth of data. Engstrom, JE and Kabat, GC. Environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality in a prospective study of Californians, 1960-98 BMJ 2003; 326:1057. This study found “No significant associations were found for current or former exposure to environmental tobacco smoke before or after adjusting for seven confounders and before or after excluding participants with pre-existing disease.”
Another study (2010) found: “ETS exposure was not found to significantly increase risk among never smokers in this study” and “It is now clear that the molecular pathogenesis of lung cancer in smokers and non-smokers is different.” Darren R Brenner, Rayjean J Hung, Ming-Sound Tsao, Frances A Shepherd, Michael R Johnston, Steven Narod, Warren Rubenstein and John R McLaughlin. Lung cancer risk in never-smokers: a population-based case-control study of epidemiologic risk factors. BMC Cancer, 2010,10:285 DOI: 10.1186/1471-2407-10-285
See the latest study disputing the risks of second hand smoke: Peter N Lee, John S Fry, Barbara A Forey, Jan S Hamling, Alison J Thornton, Environmental tobacco smoke exposure and lung cancer: A systematic review. World J Meta-Anal. Apr 26, 2016; 4(2): 10-43, doi: 10.13105/wjma.v4.i2.10
CONCLUSION: Most, if not all, of the ETS/lung cancer association can be explained by confounding adjustment and misclassification correction. Any causal relationship is not convincingly demonstrated.
As one of the people who started this resistence in the Netherlands and who was a spokesman for the foundation, I strongly disagree with Mr. Aldrichs’ statements. If you fully read the NRC article you should see that no evidence was provided for the statement in the heading. The tobacco industry never paid one cent to the bar owners’ organisation. Everything was funded by the bar owners and organisers of the persistence.This was a grass roots action against regulations causing a social disaster.
I think you may be living in a dream world of the past, Mr. Aldrich. No company – and certainly not a tobacco company – is allowed to advertise or promote smoking in Europe after the European governments’ commitment to the UN-convention FCTC, Framework Convention of Tobacco Control. This is the convention that requires governments to ban smoking in the hospitality industry and other private companies.
The only “big business” actively involved in smoking bans and tobacco control is the Big Pharma companies, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and Johnson & Johnson. These global companies have used billions of dollars (not just €35K) over 25 years to promote a false claim to the public through the “Tobacco Control” organisations in government administrations – the claim that “secondhand smoke kills”.
They did that for one reason: To help spread smoking bans world-wide, as part of their marketing plan to stimulate the sales of their pharmaceutical products to smokers in the world.
This is a political and scientific scandal of historic dimensions, that will be revealed in full eventually. Some of it is already on the record:
https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2014/11/08/anti-smoking-experts-paid-by-big-pharma/
Thank you all for your comments. What those cumulatively tell me is how contentious smoking regulation still is despite the fact that it appears to have been settled. Both sides to the debate are passionate and firm in their positions and each brings forth scientific evidence in support of its own position. Each also charges the opposing side with inappropriate and deceitful strategies to advance its position. I find this fascinating as a social scientist especially given that it’s not a new debate nor are the various smoking control regulations very new.
I welcome any additional, other positions and would like to especially learn from people everywhere who have an opinion about the role of communities and members of communities in this struggle and about other issues which matter to communities and involve opposing opinions.
Tai it’s a prohibition movement and nothing less it has zilch to do with health it’s about hate and de normalization of an activity a few find disgusting!
We had tobacco prohibition between 1895 -1923 in 43 of 45 states all were repealed by 1917.
“We all know”…..When I see those three words connected to the issue of smoking I usually skip the article because it signals another Emperor admirer. After ten years of looking for the proof on ETS you get weary of the same shit. So smoking is bad for you, well lets add it to drink, car emissions, saturated fats, milk, liver, bread, red meat, toast, roast potatoes and a list that now runs into hundreds of items we consume everyday. We all know this is a crusade of puritans, based on people being economical with the truth to give the intolerant and puritanical a back stop argument against an aesthetic. Metadata is the new god! Soon the British pub is a thing of the past. Morphed into something more like a Victorian themed restaurant than a place of adult relaxation. You know you’re in trouble when there is a maître d’s lectern inside the door. At the rate pubs are closing the anti smoking lobby in the 21st century will have done what the temperance movement of 19th century never did.
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There are many things that are bad for you especially social engineering and bullying and the mental torture of someone who has a cigarette (you must stop, you must take medication that may give you suicidal thoughts like champix/chantix, might give you violent tendencies, suggest that you buy gum or patches where the nicotine goes directly into your bloodstream and may cause you to be hyperactive like it did my daughter, over and over because if you are not ready to quit, they don’t work and sometimes even if you want to, they don’t work, buy e-cigarettes because someone is budding in your business to the point of going in your car and telling you what you can do in your own apartment that you pay rent on and using your children against you, then there’s the idea that, “oh, it’s no problem you can just go to the bar and gamble your life away, fall into despair and anguish over it, but that’s perfect for the government to get free money for doing nothing and look around at the infrastructure, hospitals, schools, roads that are just lovely, snow plowing that is not done, you have to stay in your house for days because they can’t move it because it is now 20 inches of hard ice, but you can’t have an innocent cigarette inside. Meanies. Really pitiful that you have nothing better to do with your time. smile emoticon:) #trumpforpresident Come back to the real world and mind your own business.
A good article from the Spectator dealing with the issue of this page.
A public health Pooh-Bah is a self-appointed guru convinced utterly their own rightness, who delights in telling the rest of us how to live and brook no contradiction. While many public health experts are objective analysts and commentators open to opinions other than their own, and accept contrary evidence on its merits, it’s the Pooh-Bahs who tend to dominate the media, and get in the ears of politicians.
In the Pooh-Bah tradition of happily blasting away at Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, Big Alcohol and Big Gambling.
The last I heard, buying and selling sweets, choccies, convenience foods and the like were legal. These products are lawfully available, and for many of us are highly enjoyable pleasures in our drab lives. Their manufacture, wholesale and retail industries create many thousands of jobs, and for many teens a first job at Maccas is a rite of passage. They contribute many millions of dollars to the economy through GST, company tax, and the personal taxes of their employees. Surely they’re entitled to let policy-makers know of their views on public policy and legislation, and suggest constructive alternatives?
Apparently not. Public health Pooh-Bahs are a fully paid-up branch of the nanny state Left, with Left values and a Left worldview. To them, it’s only ok to express an opinion, or engage in the political process, if you’re ‘one of them’. The rest of us can go to hell because that’s where we belong, it seems. The Left’s intolerance and hate of those who dare question it, as amply demonstrated by last Sunday’s celebrity-studded rabble-rousing against Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, is no spontaneous eruption: as the one-sided public health debate highlights, it is institutionalised in academia, promoted by taxpayer-funded lobby groups like the Cancer Council, and propagated by fellow traveller journalists and commentators.
The public health Pooh-Bahs’ arrogance is laughable. If an industry and its products are legal, it has every right to make whatever political investments it chooses, provided they comply with electoral and disclosure laws. That includes all the so-called evil Bigs – even the daddy of them all, Big Tobacco. The Pooh-Bahs should put that in their pipes and smoke it.
As for politicians, as policy-makers and legislators they need to consult and consider many issues, many views. How they weigh and filter these to make their decisions is entirely up to them, and they’re ultimately accountable to the voters for the decisions they make and how they make them. Just because a person or company is a party donor doesn’t mean they’ll get their way with a government or opposition.
Tripe like this would be laughable except for one thing. It reflects a highly successful tactic of the public health lobby, and the Left generally, to hamstring their opponents by flinging mud and making McCarthyist allegations as a substitute for respectful debate. Collectively, this is a group of Aristotelian philosopher kings that refuses to accept facts challenging their omniscient wisdom, and never hesitates to play the man (or industry) rather than the ball – usually by sticking the qualifier ‘Big’ in front of any interest they want to discredit, and discrediting anyone who even sympathises with a Big’s policy case, let alone accepts funds from them.
It’s high time someone called out these public health Pooh-Bahs for what they are: self-righteous, intolerant, arrogant intellectual bullies and purveyors of miserable puritanism for the masses, with no trust in the sentience, wisdom and good judgment of anyone but themselves.
If public health Pooh-Bahs want Big Whatever not to make political donations, fine. But only if they agree that federal and state governments level the field by defunding generously subsidised Pooh-Bah public health academics and organisations.