Addicts have a plan B as Sweden gives up cigarettes

Date: 07/07/05

Swedish nightlife has not changed much since a ban of smoking in restaurants and pubs was introduced on 1 June. Smokers puff as much as before. But Swedish producers of the alternative tobacco, snus, rub their hands and wait for winter.

One of the reasons for the trouble-free introduction of the smoking ban is Sweden's hot summer. Swedes are not short of opportunities to sit out on sunny terraces and smokers are easily persuaded to step outside.

"We have not had a single report of smokers causing problems in bars, or outside, in the whole month of June," says inspector and deputy chief Linda Bergvall of the Gothenburg City police unit, who patrols "the Avenue", the city's main street, lined with bars, clubs and restaurants.

Norway, which introduced a smoking ban one year before the Swedes, experienced a decrease in cigarette sales when winter struck and the same thing is expected to happen in Sweden. It will not be funny to go out to smoke in -20¡C and merciless winds, smokers say.

Manufacturers of snus, traditional Swedish moist snuff that consumers shape into a wad and tuck under the upper lip, hope that the ban on cigarettes will turn smokers into snus consumers. Snus has more than a million users in Sweden already and half of them are former smokers.

In time for the smoke ban, specially designed "wad trays" the size of normal ashtrays, have been marketed for bars and restaurants: in glass and porcelain for the exclusive venues, in plastic for pubs. Flavoured snus in bright-coloured boxes is being targeted at former party smokers.

"A lot of people are not allowed to smoke in their work places and use snus instead at work. Then they smoke when they party in the weekend. We think that these will now stick to snus even when they go out," says Adam Gillberg, chairman of Skruf Snus, which has doubled its sales in the last two months. Gillberg attributes a growing general interest in snus to the ban which was a hot issue in the media and in the streets for several months.

In the early stage of debate, restaurant and bar-owners protested against a ban. But as polls showed that the ban would create a large new group of customers - non-smokers who had been reluctant to eat out because of cigarette smoke - they switched sides. The latest poll, from April showed that 19% of non-smokers will go out more from now on and only 3% of smokers say they will go out less.

Sweden has the lowest smoking rate in Europe, and is the only country in the world to have reached the World Health Organization's goal of bringing its share of smokers down to less than 20% of the population by 2000. Only 16%, or 1.4 million, of adults smoke. In the two most northern regions of Sweden, Norrbotten and Lapland, only 3% of men smoke cigarettes; 30% use snus. The country also has the lowest number of tobacco-related mortality at 11%, compared to 25% in the rest of Europe.

Article takes a look at the situation in Sweden after the introduction of a ban on smoking in restaurants and pubs on 1 June 2005. In the country with the lowest smoking rate in Europe producers of the alternative tobacco, snus, were expecting rising sales, especially for the following winter.