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February 14, 2012
Stockholm smokers hit with ban
Published: 27 Aug 09 08:23 CET | Double click on a word to get a translation
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/21712/20090827/
Stockholm city employees will be ordered to stub out their cigarettes at work from May 1st next year as the city is the latest Swedish municipality to announce a ban.
- 'Smokers cost Swedish councils billions': report (25 Aug 09)
- Woman affirmed right to smoke in own garden (7 Aug 09)
- Swedes back al fresco smoking ban (1 Jun 09)
The formal decision has not yet been taken but is expected to gain a majority when a vote is held in the autumn, with the governing centre-right coalition in favour of the smoking ban.
Smokers will from next May only be able to enjoy a cigarette on their unpaid lunch hour.
Gothenburg county council is also reported to be mulling a similar ban.
A new report published this week by the Swedish Public Health Institute (Statens Folkhälsoinstitut) indicated that smokers are costing Swedish municipalities 2.6 billion kronor ($367 million) per annum in the form of breaks and sickness absences.
Work time lost to smoke breaks totalled 31,300 kronor per smoker per annum, the institute calculated.
Furthermore smokers typically claim an additional eight sick days in comparison with a non-smoker and this costs an additional 13,700 kronor per smoker per annum.
The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKL) supports the introduction of smoking bans. A survey conducted by SKL earlier in 2009 showed that 64 of Sweden's 290 local municipalities had decided to introduce work time smoking bans.
External link: On Swedish Business - Smoking bans become a money issue »
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Fin means anyhting from sweet to proper. When someone says, Du är så fin it's quite a compliment.
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So in less than a year you either have to overcome your addiction or be forced to choose between your job and the cigarettes. I hope most people would be sensible enough to trash the killer sticks.
Kudos to The Government and SKL.
Why does every report from many of the vastly over subsidised institutes here warrant so much respect when it is clear that many are out of touch with the modern society and are in fact the guiltiest parties when it comes to swallowing tax-payers money.
By the way any news on how much privately surfing the net in work 'costs' the taxpayer? If my memory serves me correct from a UK report it is the biggest waste of business hours by far. Of course downloading illegal stuff and stealing off owners of music etc..here is considered acceptable so that's ok then.
Priorities, priorities, priorities.
Plus, you shouldn't be smoking during paid working hours anyway, other than your lunch hours (PS. What about people who get paid monthly and not hourly ? how will that work ), thought that was common sense.
Totally agree with you Plowbridge. I think we can add the time taken out for Fika breaks and mass extended summer vacation, how much money do companies loose there??
Oh well
Think the police officer going through tobacco withdrawal, think about the judge hearing your case, the arbitrator, the teacher, the tax collector, the ...
I have seen people going through withdrawal - SCARY!
(Is now the time to point out not to take the above too seriously? ;-)
I think it is good they are stopping these free smoking breaks.
I believe that the 2 PAID breaks during the work day (ficka?), should also be able to be used by smokers to get their DRUG FIX! How can people be stopped from doing anything on their "BREAKS"?
Just to be fair with tax payers, high taxes must be put to cigarettes in order to destroy smoker's pocket rather that rest of non smokers tax payers, I consider it is fair!
If smoking is legal, then any citizen should be allowed to smoke in public areas, especially in the ones maintained by the taxes collected from the public.
44,000 sek? How did they arrive at that number. Who held the stop watch and counted the sick days? The trouble is that statistics are not raw data. Statistics is a method for analysing large data sets, raw or otherwise. There are plenty of ways of getting the statistics to say what you want. To start with, you could just make up the data. If you don't want to go for quite such blantant fraud, cherry-picking the data (or the subjects giving the data) and leading questions are always good. Once you have the data, there are many, many different ways of looking at it, so there's bound to be one that will lead to the answer you want.
The morning/afternoon break was a hard-fought-for right, to ensure that staff can take a breather (no pun intended). You are supposed to take a rest for that period, ironically for the sake of your health!
Ironically, at my former workplace, I had a stand-up row with my manager because checking my email in a break was a heinous crime ro her, yet a relaxing respite from the tedium of work, whereas another colleague spent all his breaks (and more time still) slowly killing himself with nicotine/alcohol.......using the argument that it made him calm down........insane.......
Someone spoke about priorities? Sounds like employers about to get them right. For a change.
It is your own life, live it as you see fit, an no-one else should be there to tell you otherwise unless you are stopping others from doing the same!
Let me explain with an example... How about obese poeple, wouldn't they logically be as much of a burden on society/workplace as smokers?? Those clogged arteries sure do lead to problems later on. So what I ask is if the swedish government plans to be so harsh on smokers, why not obese people aswell?
But aha! You say, smokers don't only harm themselves, but those around them. You are very right indeed.. But alas, new studies from Harvard and uni of californina have found that having obese friends around you actually can influence your lifestyle aswell. Hence making you adopt some of the same lifestyle patterns as them.
Now what I'm getting to is that if the governments gonna tell you not to do one thing then turn a blind a eye to other issues then why even bother? An plus they are still gonna smoke twice as hard when they get home from work, so its not like the government is 'saving' these peoples lives.
What about other impaired persons? How about....well, everyone not exactly like me?
I feel literally sick in my stomach for these smokers. It is so cruel.
Either criminalize smoking or leave them in peace.
I love how smoking is costing the government billions. I have seen so many lazy swedes on the unemployment who don't smoke. Or unhealthy people taking time of sick for stress reasons or otherwise.
My grandmother died of smoking related illnesses, she spent 4 days in hospital, total. Where did the rest of her tax money go??
I hope the smokers start a massive revolution and riots everywhere!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!