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Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of laws like this that don't get enforced as much as 'law' would imply. Another example is the ban on smoking in workplaces to protect the employees; in the Netherlands, a couple of years ago, this law was implemented, meaning that smoking was effectively banned from bars and pubs as well. Outrage ensued from all sides. Two 'workarounds' were created:

* People just donate to the pub owner to pay the fines if the inspector came around * Certain bars had no personnel, just the owner; ergo, no personnel, so no requirement to create a smoke-free environment for personnel, so, smoke away.

Others are things like speeding (everyone does it, gets a fine on rare occasions, only the extreme ones get their license impounded), downloading music/software, etc.

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Interesting, is smoking still common in bars in the Netherlands? That's one of the laws that actually is pretty widely followed in other countries. One of the more surprising was that in a period of about 3 years, Greek bars and nightclubs went from being 100% smoke-filled to being essentially smoke-free.

Greek bars, really? I've been to Thessaloniki in November, and there were few bars/restaurants with a smoke-free zones, and I cannot imagine a completely non-smoking bar there.

In my experience many bars do adhere to the ban, but there are exceptions where the ashtrays are on the tables in plain sight. If they get caught x number of times they have to close down though.

Interesting.

I remember a while ago there was suddenly many States in the US to enact smoking bans in bars/restaurants mostly one right after another. I remember when I was in high school they passed the law in my State and they had some people interviewed on the news about it. However, while I heard about "smokeasys" existing (term comes from prohibition era speakeasys) I have never seen one and I've been to a lot of bars in many areas and various States. Some people complained but compliance was basically a non issue.

As a result, I think younger smokers are now just used to going outside to smoke, I don't know hardly anyone who smokes in their house and those that do seem to be really old. Very very few non-smokers let smokers smoke in their house, and hardly any smokers ask, they just walk outside. This wasn't the case even 15 years ago.

It wasn't really that long since the law had passed, but several (probably 6) years ago I went to the American South and I was asked "smoking or non-smoking" and it was so weird, even though that's basically how I grew up! When I was a kid teachers smoked in the teacher's lounge, in school.

However hookah bars are allowed to exist almost everywhere as far as I can tell, and I really never understood how that fits into the law.

Also a few States allow exceptions for private clubs so places like the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) allow smoking.

Also, some except casinos, for whatever weird reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans_in_the_Uni...

Any other places these laws are loosely enforced?

> However hookah bars are allowed to exist almost everywhere as far as I can tell, and I really never understood how that fits into the law.

In my city, they have a simple rule that decides whether or not smoking indoors can happen: whether or not a majority percentage of retail revenue comes from the sale of tobacco products. So, things like cigar, pipe, and hookah shops can allow indoor smoking, but virtually no bar in the city can. (Who, by law, must put a sign up indicating a majority of sales come from the sale of alcohol for consumption on-premise. You can't have both a majority of sales from alcohol and from tobacco at the same time, so cigar bars all had to create patios.)

These laws are not loosely enforced in the city, to the extent that there is a team of bureaucrats tasked with enforcing action in regards to complaints. However, whether or not every customer reports infractions, is a different story. =)

Good examples, except for downloading: Dutch law recognizes intellectual property, broadcasting/selling copyrighted material is forbidden, but obtaining it is not illegal.

That depends on what is downloaded. Downloading copyrighted software is illegal in NL, downloading movies, music and books is not.

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