Smoking Ban, India and the World...

Before typing in my thoughts to the word processor, I thought it would be wise to delve deeper into the banning of smoking in public places around the globe. And I was right in doing so, because till now I was under the impression that India is the only country to impose such a ban. In fact we are actually delayed in passing such a bill: more than 80 nations have such bans in place (Courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans). To my surprise, the earliest smoking ban dates back to as early as 1590 brought about by Pope Urban VII and the first modern age ban was imposed by Nazis in Germany and was in effect till their fall in 1945 (Courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_ban).

Though governments round the world have banned smoking, how many nations are effectively implementing this rule is still an unanswered question. My feel is that, in India this ban as any other rule has transformed into an array of bribe collection mechanism. Curious about other nation’s success stories on such bans, I searched the web and found out one or two research paper exploring the barriers in implementing smoking bans. This clearly means that every other country is trying to achieve higher success rates in imposing smoking ban and are finding it tougher. Probably I will weave one of my next blog based on my reading of these researches.