Reporter Alessandra Rizzo of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that on January 10, 2005, a law will take effect banning smoking in bars and restaurants in Italy. As expected, smokers and establishment owners are staging fierce protests.

Although smoking will be permissible in separate smoking areas which have a ventilation system and continuous floor-to-ceiling walls, Director General of Confcommercio Edi Sommariva reports that most establishment owners have complained that the costs of creating such a smoking area are too much to be worthwhile (roughly 300 Euro per square meter). As a result, an expected 90 percent of restaurants will prevent smoking. Confcommercio represents the interests of bar and restaurant owners in Italy. They plan to go to court if the law takes effect as anticipated.

Rizzo notes that restaurant owners are equally concerned about their relations with their customers. “We are being asked to become informers, but we don’t want to give up our relations with our customers,” Rizzo quotes Sommariva in her article Monday.

A national Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, ran an editorial on the front page, which protested that reporting violations is “the job of the state and of its public officials. A bartender and a restaurateur are not guards.”

Claudio Ferrari, a 27-year-old archaeologist, reflects the feelings of a significant part of the Italian population:

“The law is exaggerated, and it’s based on a terrorist approach I don’t agree with. I don’t share the idea that it’s up to the state to educate citizens. A little common sense is all it takes.”