Among America’s most successful cultural exports must be the tobacco habit.
By my reckoning, smokers are about a quarter of the population in Israel. (My guesstimate was right on the money — see the articles below.)
Movies feature an intermission apparently geared towards smokers; half way through the projectionist stops the film and brings up the house lights to allow those who are jonesing to step outside a drag.
Attempts to create smoke-free environment are admirable. At one mall, every square support pillar in a common area has a no-smoking sign. To hammer the point home, the signs have been placed on each side of the pillar. With each pillar about 4 meters apart, it makes for a sea of no smoking signs wherever you look. Yet, the anti-smoking laws are only about a year old, and widely ignored.
January 20, 2003
Survey: 51 percent of non-smokers are afraid to ask smokers to put out their cigarettes in public places
At a press conference yesterday marking the first anniversary of laws banning smoking in public places, Health Minister Nissim Dahan assailed local authorities for failing to enforce the bans.
Dahan said he was shocked at the local authorities’ unwillingness to cooperate with the enforcement of the bans and warned that if the they did not change their attitudes he would - in the event he remains health minister after the elections - transfer enforcement powers to the Health Ministry.
Dahan presented the results of a survey commissioned by the ministry that showed that 51 percent of the non-smoking public are afraid of a violent reaction if they ask people smoking in public places to put out their cigarettes. Dr. Mina Zemach, who conducted the survey, described the data as astonishing.
`People are killed over parking spots’
Dahan said that if people were killed in disputes over parking spots, it was no wonder that people were afraid to speak up against smoking.
By Haim Shadmi
Israelis feel healthier, smoke less study
Despite the intifada, recession, and surging unemployment of the last two years, Israelis smoke less, feel healthier, and are generally more likely to take care of their health than in 2002.
These are some of the rather surprising results of a Health Ministry survey conducted recently. The data were disclosed by Dr. Dov Tamir, head of health promotion in the ministry’s public health services branch.
Contrary to expectations, only 26 percent of the representative sample said they smoked, compared to 27% in 2000 and 28% in 1994. Sixteen percent of young women and 29% of young men aged 18 to 24 smoked last year; the figures were 20% of women and 28% of men over the age of 45.
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