Cigarettes

[migracja]

After a few decades living in Poland, cigarettes make me think of spoiled kids, workers, gopniks and bums. With being poor and uneducated. After leaving to Germany, a rich and developed country, smoke blew in my face anyway.

Stations

First when I was waiting for a connecting train at a station. Imagine waiting on a platform in Cologne: Köln Hauptbahnhof. You stand in the middle of the crowd, and suddenly it stinks! Where's that bastard?!? You're thinking: I'm going to find them and explain the rules of harmonious sharing of public spaces. You notice a gray puff of smoke right in the platform centre, defiantly floating next to a notice with a cigarette sign … "smokers zone"??? Mind = blown. Who in their right mind came to the conclusion that placing toxic smoke smack dab in the middle of the station was a good idea? Poland, sensibly, places them on the very end of platforms, to save waiting passengers from the smoke. Eventually, you walk across the platform, passing by another smokers zone, until you settle on the edge, where the roof is no longer present.

Trains

Trains are more pleasant. Neither ICE, nor local trains, are affected by people having forbidden smoke breaks in the potty. Poland could learn from this. However, the situation evens out during stops: smokers often take position right at the open doors.

Stops

Finally you leave the train and slouch towards the end. You pass by a couple bus stops, abundant with smokers. There's no rule of 5 or 10 meters from the stop, where smoking is fined. While considering that, you notice that half of the bus stops have banners advertising cigarettes. No matter if it's in the middle of the city or next to a school where kids wait for their buses every day. Wasn't that forbidden? I think it was in Poland… You decide to get some water from the supermarket to chill down.

Shops

Bad idea! When you approach the checkout, the tobacco industry doubles down. You can see a screen hanging just over the checkout, displaying tobacco products, and bringing focus to the products around it. Getting closer, you notice an entire shelf full of cigarette paraphernalia: filters, empty colorful boxes (without warnings about health impacts), lighters with pictures on them, etc. Eventually, at the checkout itself, there are cigarettes. Usually it's a whole shelf filled with boxes of different brands, placed right in your face. Sometimes it takes the form of a machine, which waits for a button press to spit out boxes.

On the last street, just before your destination, you pass by a cigarette vending machine and sigh heavily.

Results

It seems that Germany is not especially keen on protecting their citizenry from the effects of nicotine. There's no top-down influence, and knowing how addicting nicotine is, there's little hope to see any bottom-up cultural shift. As a result, Germany is regrettably above average in the smokers charts. Germans smoke about 18% more cigarettes per person than Poland (2016), and smokers comprise 30% of its citizens. That's more than Poland with 28% (WHO 2016). In 2016 Germany lost every person in about 657 due to smoking (125'000, 14% of all deaths). Poland lost one person per about 533 (71'000, 18% of all deaths: tobaccoatlas, population of Poland, population of Germany).

It's sad that this scourge is so hard to defeat.