Study reveals that smoking ban in Ticino had no impact on gastronomy revenues

Switzerland’s federal anti-smoking law is weak, allowing smoking in certain restaurants or bars. Nevertheless, fifteen Swiss cantons (including Ticino) have adopted comprehensive smoking bans on a cantonal level.

When such bans were introduced in canton Ticino, they faced opposition arguing that a complete smoking ban in workplaces would have a negative impact in revenue in gastronomy business. The results of a study published yesterday at the International Journal of Public Health show that this has not been the case and that smoking bans in Ticino had no impact on gastronomy revenues, confirming similar findings from other countries (see for example here and  here ). This study is available to download for free here (html) and here (pdf)

The results of this study are very relevant at the moment, as on September 23rd 2012, the Swiss people will vote on an initiative calling for a comprehensive smoking ban on the federal level and one of the arguments against it is the alleged financial impact of such a ban. This study also compliments a study that we recently talked about, which showed the health benefits of the complete smoking ban for personnel working in the gastronomy sector.

The study was conducted by Peter Schulz, Uwe Hartung and Maddalena Fiordelli and underwent a rigorous peer review by international experts in the field before being accepted for publication. It is available to download free of charge following this link. If you would like more information on the study, please contact Dr. Uwe Hartung . If you would like to read more on the matter, you can download a related article here.