MUNICH, Germany – Stop by for a drink at the Roosevelt cocktail bar and you’ll be asked: "Do you have a membership?"
It’s not an exclusive door policy, just a loophole to get around Bavaria’s ban on smoking in bars, restaurants and other public places.
Members-only smokers clubs are cropping up across Germany as state governments join a Europe-wide trend toward banishing smokers to the sidewalks.
At the Roosevelt Classic Smoking Bar, there’s no screening process and joining is free. New members are immediately issued a numbered, cream-colored laminated card.
Germany has banned smoking nationwide in government buildings but leaves jurisdiction of bars, restaurants and other public places to the nation’s 16 states.
Most have passed some kind of smoking restrictions. But these have been watered down by local courts or creative bar owners with ingenious ways to allow their patrons to keep puffing.
Courts in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony ruled that single-room bars and restaurants were unfairly penalized under laws requiring establishments to have separate rooms for smokers. In Saarland, a court ruled that smoking could continue in hookah bars.
Bavarian lawmakers — fearful tourists would stay away from the annual Oktoberfest — struck a deal exempting beer tents from nonsmoking legislation that they had previously touted as the toughest in the nation.
According to the World Health Organization, a third of German adults are smokers. That’s a lower rate than in Austria, where almost half the population smokes. But it means Germany is one of the heaviest smoking countries in Europe, along with a cluster of eastern European nations.
Among Europeans, Britons pay the most for cigarettes — about 5.23 British pounds ($10.25) for a pack of 20, according to the WHO. Cigarettes are cheapest in Romania, where the same pack costs around 4.00 lei ($1.70). A pack of 20 cigarettes in Germany is likely to cost €4.44 ($6.88).
Since Bavaria adopted its smoking ban January, more than 50 establishments have declared themselves private clubs, requiring patrons to sign up for membership in exchange for the right to light up.
Anti-smoking lobbyists are appalled. But Roosevelt’s owner, Kai Uthoff, insists smoking has been a cornerstone of the bar’s ambiance since he opened it nine years ago.
"I wanted to offer three things: smoking, drinks and good music," he said as the sounds of John Coltrane’s "Blue Train" drifted through the narrow room. "Without one, it doesn’t work."
Uthoff boasted his smoking club now has 4,000 members, adding that it’s named after American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt — who did away with Prohibition.
"It’s a good thing that he did, ending that needless law," Uthoff said. "Now I have the same problem, but with smoking."
Across town at Palais, a dance club near the main train station, the crowd was younger and the smoke was thicker.
Co-owner Pit Bischoff said over pulsing techno beats that his patrons — 90 percent of them smokers — urged him to make Palais a smoking club, a move that has caused a 10 percent dip in attendance, but saved him other headaches.
"People were piling up on the sidewalk outside to smoke, leaving their drinks everywhere," Bischoff said. "It was a mess."
In July, the nation’s highest court rules on whether anti-smoking laws threaten the existence of single-room bars. The Karlsruhe-based court’s decision involves several cases and could set nationwide precedent over fragmented state statutes.
Ernst-Guenther Krause, a strident anti-smoking campaigner for more than 30 years, believes the federal ruling offers the best chance to protect waiters and bartenders from the health risks associated with working in smoky clubs.
"People working at smoking clubs have no choice but to suffer through the dirty air," said Krause. "It’s not so easy to find a new job."
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