Cigarettes still burning holes in Austrian ban

Cafe owners and patrons in Austria are still puffing away seven weeks after a partial smoking ban was introduced, and they are not about to stop.

“Why not turn this place into a hospital, while we’re at it?” asks Georg Hold, one of many Viennese “Kaffeehaus” owners now up in arms against the new legislation, which was introduced on January 1.

Smoking bans have been distinctly unpopular and hard to enforce in a country where, according to the World Health Organization, no less than 47 percent of the population smokes, and each consumer burns through an average 2,073 cigarettes per year.

A first attempt in January 2008 to curb smoking in restaurants and bars on a voluntary basis failed miserably.