Movies like Fellini’s 1960 film “La Dolce Vita” created an image of Italy as a smokers’ paradise. Cigarettes were the ubiquitous props of glamorous socialites, jaded reporters and just about anyone seated at a cafe.
Those days are long gone. A series of laws gradually banned smoking at shared indoor spaces like movie theaters and restaurants.
Now, the city of Milan’s center-left government has taken the crackdown one step further, becoming the first major Italian city to ban smoking outside unless the smoker is pretty far from other people. No more huddling around the doors of office buildings. And no more grabbing an after-dinner smoke at the outdoor tables at restaurants.
Under the new rules, which went into effect Jan. 1, smoking is banned everywhere except for “isolated areas where it’s possible to respect a distance of at least 33 feet from other people.”
“People will smoke a little less, which is good for their health and everybody’s health, and those who don’t smoke will be less exposed to secondhand smoke,” Milan’s deputy mayor, Anna Scavuzzo, said in a recent interview. “We will get used to the fact that smokers have to pay more attention to what they are doing, not nonsmokers.”
Milan is Italy’s fashion and design capital, known to attract chic — and often black clad — visitors for taste-setting events throughout the year. Those arriving for the fashion week this month will no longer find ashtrays on cafe tables, and the visitors who frequent the trendy Navigli district will be hard pressed to find someplace to light up.
For detractors, the new rules are an assault on more than just smoking, but on a cherished way of life.
“The real problem is not the cigarette, but the loss of freedom of choice,” Vittorio Feltri, one of the editors in chief of Il Giornale, a conservative Milan newspaper, bristled in an editorial. “In a world where we try to control every aspect of our lives, where we are afraid of everything and everyone, smoking outdoors, among friends, is not just a gesture of the convivial power of tobacco, but an act of rebellion against conformity.”
Smoking in public indoor spaces has been forbidden in Italy since 2005, when the national government enacted what was then one of the toughest laws in Europe. At the time, many questioned how effective the ban would be in Italy, where cigarettes after meals were as common as coffee. But Italians complied, if grudgingly, and the number of smokers has dropped from 22 percent to 19 percent of the population over 14 years of age, according to the national statistics agency ISTAT and health ministry data.
Milanese officials defend the new rules as possibly providing a further benefit. Milan is one of Italy’s most polluted cities and there are hopes that the outdoor restrictions will improve air quality by reducing some particulate matter. According to a regional health agency, cigarette smoke is responsible for 7 percent of the city’s particulate matter emissions.
Ms. Scavuzzo also said the new rules were fair partly because a vast majority of Italians do not smoke, so it was their right “to not have to breathe other people’s smoke.”
Roberto Carlo Rossi, the president of Milan’s medical guild, acknowledged the risk posed by secondhand smoke is less outdoors than indoors, adding that when people are 33 feet apart, “it’s difficult for smoke to create problems.” But he also said that it was never pleasant to smell smoke during a meal.
“It’s a question of good manners,” he said.
During a stroll through Milan’s city center last month, Anna Romano and Giorgia Cappello, pack-a-day smokers, sounded less upset than resigned. They said that when cravings struck, they sought isolated spots, and kept running into other smokers stealthily puffing in back streets.
“We were all maintaining our distance,” said Ms. Romano, suggesting that people were being respectful. “Or maybe they were afraid of getting fined,” chimed in Ms. Cappello. Fines range from 40 to 240 euro, or about $42 to $249.
Local police have been holding back on fines for outdoor smoking, with only 16 issued in the first three weeks of the new rules going into effect. But Ms. Scavuzzo said that such a soft approach might not last forever.
“If a measure isn’t accompanied by a fine,” she said, “Italians are not so Scandinavian that they’ll respect the law regardless.”
There are a few public critiques, like the doctored photo of Giuseppe Sala, the city’s mayor smoking with the tagline, “You’re not our father. Let us smoke” or a statue at the Milan Polytechnic university of Milan being fitted with a giant cigarette. But so far, griping has been subdued, if only because recent inclement weather has kept most people away from outdoor restaurant tables.
One person who is fuming nonetheless is Marco Barbieri, secretary general for the Milan branch of the Italian retailers’ association Confcommercio, which includes bars and restaurants. He is certain that members of his association will be singled out for fines because it’s easy to spot errant smokers dining or drinking outdoors.
“We all know smoking is bad for you,” he said, but the restrictions do “not have the noble objective to educate against smoking. It’s the usual measure which aims to inconvenience and create harm for businesses using the alibi that smoking is bad.”
He added that if city hall had really been concerned about health and pollution, it would have included electronic cigarettes in the ban. City officials have defended their actions, saying that those devices did not burn tobacco and, they believe, were unlikely to have much of an environmental impact. They added that users of e-cigarettes might eventually be held to the same standards as those who smoke regular cigarettes.
But the decision to limit the new rules to cigarettes has perplexed both health workers and researchers.
“This is a major flaw in the ban, because today young people start with electronic cigarettes,” and then move on to traditional cigarettes, which are relatively affordable in Italy, said Silvano Gallus, a researcher at the Mario Negri Institute in Milan. Studies show that more than half of Italian youths between 13 and 15 have tried electronic cigarettes at least once, a trend he called “an emergency.”
“It’s a pity that e-cigarettes were not banned,” said Anna Mondino, the scientific director of the AIRC Foundation for cancer research. “But we’re going to get there.”
Any restriction “is absolutely welcome,” she added, since such measures, along with advertising warnings on cigarette packages, had led to a drop in deaths from lung cancer and related diseases both in smokers and those exposed to secondhand smoke. That is no small thing, she said, “at a time when social medicine in Italy and elsewhere in the world is becoming essentially unaffordable.”
For now, some people are withholding judgment.
“It’s too soon to tell” whether the new rules will hurt business, said Edoardo Isella, the owner of the downtown Rubin Bar. “We’ll have to wait a few months, to see what happens.”
Nicolas Serra, a waiter at Biffi, a historic restaurant inside Milan’s downtown Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, said the 33 feet rule would be difficult to maintain: “Prohibition is not the way to get people to stop smoking; the more you ban, the more people want to do it.”
But Ms. Mondino of the cancer research foundation has high hopes.
“Milan is a good test city, because it is used to changes,” she said. “If Milan implements it, maybe the rest of Italy will listen.”